Lord Sheikh

Mohamed Iltaf Sheikh, Esquire, having been created Baron Sheikh, of Cornhill in the City of London, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Feldman and the Lord Cope of Berkeley.

Lord Morrow

Maurice George Morrow, Esquire, having been created Baron Morrow, of Clogher Valley in the County of Tyrone, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Molyneaux of Killead and the Lord Foulkes of Cumnock.

The Lord Chancellor: Leave of Absence

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, before business begins, may I take the opportunity to inform the House that I shall be undertaking a ministerial visit to Belfast on Wednesday 28 June? Accordingly, I trust that the House will grant me leave of absence.

Marine Legislation

Lord Hunt of Chesterton: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	Whether, as part of their forthcoming marine legislation, they will establish an agency to co-ordinate more effectively policies for oceans, the atmosphere and climate change.

Lord Rooker: My Lords, we are considering whether a marine management organisation should be established, the functions it should undertake if it were established and whether it would achieve greater efficiency in managing marine activities and protecting the environment compared with the current arrangements. In addition, an early priority for the department is to explore setting up an office for climate change to develop climate change policy and strategy, working across government.

Lord Hunt of Chesterton: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. Do Her Majesty's Government agree that the effective, high-profile and transparent operation of the interdepartmental Food Standards Agency is, in fact, a rather good model for managing and communicating national and international policies for oceans, atmosphere and climate change, whose critical nature can be dealt with only in such a way? Will Her Majesty's Government reconsider their limited proposal for the marine agency—perhaps, following the Minister's reply, they are doing so already—in the light of the broader co-ordination undertaken in the United States, with its National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and recent administrative changes in India? I declare an interest as president of ACOPS.

Lord Rooker: My Lords, we have just finished consulting on our 300-page document, which is a really good read and is in the Library. The consultation closed only last Friday. There have been more than 1,000 responses to the idea of a marine Bill, part of which will consider whether there should be an organisation such as that implied in the Question. It will take some time for the Government to respond. There will be further consultation and possibly a draft Bill some time during this Parliament.

Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, it is welcome news that there may still be a draft Bill, which is in the Government's five-year plan. Can the Minister give any indication of why it is apparently being delayed? Have circumstances changed in any way, or is it simply that the Government find themselves unremarkably overloaded?

Lord Rooker: My Lords, I am a little surprised at the question. The document was published, I think, on 23 March, the consultation finished last week, and we are still in the first Session of this Parliament. We shall assess the consultations on this quite substantive document. There is a real problem around the coast, with there being so many different laws and agencies, and it depends on how far you are out from the coast. Different rules and regulations apply all over the place—high water, low water, mean water, harbour limits, and at three, six, 12 and 200 nautical miles. We need to get this sorted out, and we need to do it properly through consultation. So far, I think we have made quite good progress in the first Session of this Parliament.

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: My Lords, I agree with the Minister that there are many parallel processes that need drawing together, not least Defra's intercoastal zone management plan and the draft marine Bill. I hope that he will bring them together. Will the Government vocally support the European marine strategy? The marine Bill applies only to our territorial waters, and for the marine strategy to work it is critical that the European strategy works to complement our marine Bill.

Lord Rooker: My Lords, to the best of my knowledge from the inquiries that I have made, no other country in the EU is as advanced as we are in looking at the regulation of the marine environment. It will be the EU following us for a change.

Lord Harrison: My Lords, did my noble friend notice that, as well as laying emphasis on the environment, the European Union Green Paper on marine strategy refers to the Lisbon agenda of promoting jobs and competitiveness in the European Union?

Lord Rooker: My Lords, yes, but we are not creating jobs; we are regulating what we do with the overall marine environment to make sure that what we do is sustainable. If we use our brains on sustainability, we end up creating more wealth and jobs than we do when we are damaging the environment.

Child Trust Funds

Lord Newby: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What steps they propose to take to increase the level of uptake of child trust funds.

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, the latest account opening figures show that over 75 per cent of the oldest child trust fund vouchers were used before expiry. Moreover, no child will lose out, because the Government will allocate an account to those children whose vouchers have expired. To ensure that parents understand the choices available, the Government will continue to run advertising and provide information to new parents and will work with the voluntary and community sectors to provide extra help to less financially capable parents.

Lord Newby: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer. Does he not find it depressing that tens of thousands of parents who, in effect, receive a cheque literally do not know what to do with it? I urge him to put more effort into working with the FSA on the financial literacy programme that is aimed at young parents so that the child trust fund programme will be more successful than it appears to be at the moment in achieving one of its main stated aims, which is to encourage the savings habit.

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, I do not accept that the child trust fund programme has not been successful. We are encouraged by the take-up so far, but we continue to need to do lots of things to encourage even greater take-up. In particular, an advertising programme is running in women's weekly magazines, on radio and in baby changing rooms. We are maintaining relationships with the voluntary and community sector and are informing new parents. Information is being supplied to expectant and new parents when it is most relevant to them. That is an important aspect of education, and part of that is proceeding through schools. As well as the current ability to have the child trust fund feature in the curriculum, the Government propose from 2008 to embed financial capability more explicitly in the curriculum by including it in the new functional maths component of GCSE.

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: My Lords, will the Minister confirm that the scheme dreamt up by the Chancellor will cost £245 million and that one in three people entitled to it has not taken up the entitlement? What is the logic of using taxpayers' money to set up child trust funds while taxing private child trust funds, in relation to which children are restricted from getting the money until the age of 25, which seems to me entirely sensible?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, the aim of the child trust fund is to encourage engagement with financial institutions to give all children the best possible start in life. The current cost is about £240 million per year. That will increase to £480 million when the proposed additional £250 kicks in at the age of seven. That is a highly desirable scheme, and it is encouraging people to engage with the financial sector.

Lord Campbell-Savours: My Lords, how can we be sure that the children of the poor benefit from this?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, all children should be benefiting from this. As I said in my Answer, if parents do not use the voucher within the 12-month period to take up a trust fund, HMRC will open one for that child, so that all children will benefit from the arrangements.

Baroness Walmsley: My Lord, does the Minister agree that one way of making sure that all children benefit would have been to put the same money into primary education to reduce class sizes?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, the Liberal Democrats took that position when the matter was going through Parliament, but it is not a question of either/or. I am sure that the noble Baroness is well aware of the statistics on the progress that government have made in reducing class sizes: investment in schools is seven times the level of capital investment in 1997; there has been a 50 per cent real terms increase in education expenditure since 1997; and I think that there are 5,000 more primary teachers and many more class assistants. That is happening already.

Lord Clark of Windermere: My Lords, I declare an interest as the director of engage Mutual Assurance. Will the Minister acknowledge that a considerable number of individuals are topping up the child trust funds and that there is much evidence that the child trust fund initiative is significantly raising the savings culture among young families in Britain?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, I agree with the second point. I do not have any data to hand on the extent to which there is top-up of those accounts, but the child trust fund arrangements provide for up to £1,200 per year to be added to those accounts. That will encourage the saving ethic.

Baroness Noakes: My Lords, will the Minister say a little more about the take-up rates, which are two-thirds overall for child trust funds to date? Children from poorer families get a higher amount. What is the take-up rate for the families who are entitled to the higher amount as opposed to the basic amount?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, a similar question was posed in another place. The data are not readily to hand, but there is a promise that there will be a full statistical and distributional analysis in 2007of the trust fund arrangements.

Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, if HMRC opens an account for a child, when and how will the child or his or her family know about it?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, so far as I am aware, they will know as soon as it is done. The mechanics are that a dozen approved providers have made themselves available so that, when the voucher expires, HMRC will simply go down the list in order and allocate a stakeholder account to the next entity on the list. Then the parent is made aware of that, so that they have the chance later to switch providers or the nature of the account, if they so desire.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, why do the Government not know the number of people in poorer families who would get the higher amount but who have not taken up the opportunity? That must be clear from the statistics in the department. Surely the whole point of having the trust fund is to get the vouchers to the poorest families.

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, I am not saying that the data cannot be obtained from the system; they will be obtained and published, as I said.

Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, what is happening about looked-after children? Is the corporate parent topping up the trust fund?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, for looked-after children, the arrangement is that the local authority—the corporate parent—should make HMRC aware, and HMRC will open the account. I presume that the mechanics then are that that is referred back to the local authority to administer, but if I am wrong about that, I shall write to the noble Baroness.

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: My Lords, will league tables of investment performance by the approved providers be published?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, that is a very good question. I am not sure what is planned, but I see no reason why the data should not be generally available and in the public domain.

Hedge Funds

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What assessment they have made of the impact of the rapid growth in City hedge funds on the United Kingdom economy and society.

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, the Financial Services Authority is responsible for regulating financial services in the UK. It has carried out an extensive investigation of the impact of hedge fund activity on financial markets and of their suitability for retail investors. It found that hedge funds can play an important role in financial markets—in particular, through increased provision of market liquidity—but the FSA is introducing measures intended to ensure that adequate supervisory safeguards are maintained, including establishing a centre of hedge fund expertise.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. A City acquaintance of mine recently told me that the hedge fund boys were known as the cowboys of the financial markets, which seems a bit unfair to cowboys. Given that the funds are now speculating with more than £1.5 trillion, given the volatility and fragility that that inevitably brings to world financial markets, and given the context in which hedge funds appear to operate, which puts further pressure on the already embattled ethics of the City—as recently illustrated by the fines of £750,000 each imposed by the FSA on GMG and Mr Jabre—are not the Government just a bit concerned about the below-the-waterline and fundamental damage that those funds may already be inflicting on our markets and economy?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, the Government and the FSA are well aware of the risks that such funds may generate—the risks of market disruption because of counter-party arrangements, liquidity disruption, insufficient data for regulation, risk management and difficulties in valuation. Those are recognised, and the FSA has looked at them in detail to try to evaluate their extent. The FSA's most recent work suggests, on the limited available evidence, that hedge funds do not currently pose a significant risk to financial stability. A key consideration is that historically low levels of leverage are in those funds. We should, however, always be wary, given the nature of the funds and the investments into which the fund moneys are put.

Lord Marsh: My Lords, the Minister is taking a rather calm view of this. Hedge funds played a not insignificant role in Black Wednesday, which a number of colleagues in the House will remember. These undoubtedly very powerful organisations are so secretive that, although they are a massive operation in the City, there is no reference to any of the funds in the Yellow Pages. Does the Minister accept that the FSA has done a very good job and has produced a very interesting document that is only 66 pages long? Is it likely to be published generally, and will the Government have a say in what they think?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, the FSA has done several studies, the documents of which are in the public domain. One of the reasons why noble Lords will not find the funds in the Yellow Pages is that they are prohibited, by and large, from accessing the retail market in the UK. So far as regulation is concerned, the difficulty with the funds is that they are typically domiciled in places such as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and the BVI. Where UK regulation does kick in, the managers are often located in the UK, and the prime brokers, particularly the investment banks, are regulated and overseen by the FSA here. But I would not underestimate the challenge that the funds pose.
	I know that time is clicking on, but I shall say simply that things such as collateralised loan obligations, foreign exchange derivatives and commodity derivatives, into which the funds invest, may not seem matters of everyday living, but they feed through into real commercial benefits. Risk capital can be obtained at a lower price, and exporters can take the risk out of some of their exchange difficulties. We do, however, have to be mindful of the risks.

Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, how do you control hedge funds, which are a global industry, without some form of international, enforceable convention?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, obviously there is a job for Europe, which is looking at the operation of the funds industry generally in Europe, and a role for co-operation between regulators in different jurisdictions, but I come back to the point that the funds are domiciled by and large in jurisdictions whose regulation is light-touch, to say the least.

Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, bearing it in mind that the Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, also referred to the effect of hedge funds on UK society, has my noble friend seen the recent press reports indicating that an American hedge fund, known as Polygon Investment Partners, is seeking to take over Newcastle United Football Club? Does he not agree that it is undesirable for such companies to take over our great football clubs, bearing in mind that the owner of the company is described in one of those press reports as a secretive American financier who has shown no interest in British football?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that question. It would be unwise for the Government to comment on any transaction, proposed or otherwise. Clearly it is a matter for shareholders. Nor is it the role of the Government to comment on foreign or domestic ownership of our great football clubs. We hope that shareholders will take decisions that take account of the long-term interests of the club and in particular of all the supporters who turn out in good times and bad and pay hard-earned money to get through the gate.

Lord Newby: My Lords, the Minister referred to hedge funds being prohibited to retail investors. Can he confirm that the Government and the FSA will resist the pressure being brought to bear on them to change that?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, the opening-up of the retail market to unregulated funds is under consideration. A difficulty is that it is still possible for individuals to access those funds through the internet and, perhaps, other intermediaries. Obviously, any such extension must be taken only after the utmost consideration and recognition of the significant risks involved.

Baroness Noakes: My Lords, a couple of weeks ago, the European Central Bank said that the risk of collapse of hedge funds posed a greater risk than a pandemic bird flu outbreak. The FSA does not appear to agree with that. Does the Minister believe that the development of a centre of expertise, as proposed by the FSA, is a proportionate response to the risk?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, I believe that it is proportionate. It is just a part of the FSA's response to its studies and analysis of the situation, including the thematic inspections of some UK prime brokers and managers involved in the industry. The FSA's assessment is that the European Central Bank's assessment is somewhat exaggerated, in particular because the data show that there is less leverage in the funds now than in 1998, when a particular matter arose.

Lord Northbrook: My Lords, what is the situation with stamp duty for hedge funds as opposed to normal conventional equity funds?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, the funds are domiciled and would be registered outside the UK, so I do not think that the impact of UK stamp duty would arise, but if I am wrong I will write to the noble Lord.

NHS: Continuing Care

Baroness Greengross: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What is their response to the recently released data on National Health Service continuing care funding which showed that 5,000 sick and elderly people have wrongly paid for nursing care.

Lord Warner: My Lords, we are unaware of the basis for the figure of 5,000 cases quoted by the Daily Mail on 20 June. Following the ombudsman's 2003 report, the NHS undertook a review of 12,000 cases back to 1996. In about 1,800 cases, the decision not to award NHS funding is known to be incorrect, as at July 2004. Some appeals remain with the ombudsman's office. To date, the NHS has paid restitution totalling £180 million and has improved its processes as a result of the review.

Baroness Greengross: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply, and I accept that the figures in the Daily Mail may be somewhat exaggerated. However, while the clarification and simplification are welcome, does the Minister agree that about 20,000 to 25,000 people are getting only £133 in help towards nursing care? As he suggested, the judge and the ombudsman in the Grogan case found it difficult to understand how people needing a very high level of care did not get funded for continuing care to meet their obviously very complex needs.

Lord Warner: My Lords, the department has asked strategic health authorities and the NHS to look at their eligibility criteria in the light of the Grogan judgment. So far as I am aware, they are doing that conscientiously. As the noble Baroness knows, we have issued for consultation a new continuing care national framework, which we hope will simplify arrangements throughout the country.

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: My Lords, how can it be right that a Labour Administration north of the border ensure that elderly people get free continuing care, while a Labour Administration south of the border provide 20 per cent more per head in funding for services north of the border? Elderly people south of the border do not get free care and, in some cases, have had their houses sold in order to provide for it.

Lord Warner: My Lords, there is a thing called devolution, which this Government introduced, and we are proud of having done so. We took a view in England: in our response to the Royal Commission, we stressed that free personal care for everyone would be costly and would, in itself, not be guaranteed to lead to service improvements. We thought that we could more effectively spend the additional £1.5 billion a year that that would cost. I remind the noble Lord that free personal care in Scotland is not free. It does not cover all care home costs; residents are required to pay for their accommodation and board.

Lord McColl of Dulwich: My Lords, when the Hillingdon PCT assessed eligibility for fully funded continuing care under the Department of Health's proposed criteria, only six out of 33 people currently in receipt of NHS continuing care were deemed to be eligible for it. What will happen to the people who were fully funded but who will no longer be eligible when the new national framework is introduced? Will they continue to be funded in full?

Lord Warner: My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, that document is out for consultation, and we will listen to the responses. The position will remain that PCTs are responsible for assessing what registered nursing is required in their areas and providing the services to meet those needs. The single rate is a guide for nursing care payments for the average care home resident. It is up to the PCT to determine whether the rate reflects the individual's actual nursing needs.

Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, can the Minister explain why his figures correcting those published in the Daily Mail article are two years out of date?

Lord Warner: My Lords, we never deign to correct the Daily Mail, but its methodologies are often a mystery known only to itself rather than to government Ministers. The figure that I gave is known to be the number of incorrect assessments in the review, which went back to 1996. Because the review had largely been completed by July 2004, we stopped collecting any figures after that date.

Lord Addington: My Lords, do the Government agree that this mess really shows that the NHS must reassess its attitude towards long-term care and probably bring such care back within its boundaries if that is needed?

Lord Warner: My Lords, this is the Government who actually extended NHS responsibilities in paying for nursing care and meeting the needs of a lot of vulnerable people in this area. We are also the Government who introduced intensive home care, on which we know that the number of hours of contact under the intensive home care arrangements has gone up from 5.8 hours a week to 9.5 hours. I think that the Government can be proud of their record.

Lord McColl of Dulwich: My Lords, why has it taken 18 months from the announcement of a national framework for NHS continuing care for the consultation on it to be published?

Lord Warner: My Lords, we like to go about this work thoroughly and conscientiously.

Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the Minister said that there was a "thing called devolution", which his Government were proud to have introduced. In view of the fact that people south of the border get less than the people north of it, have not the Government of those south of the border bogged it?

Lord Warner: My Lords, the Government are administering the NHS with great efficiency.

The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, does that efficiency include the cost of the national appointments computer rising from £6.5 billion to £20 billion?

Lord Warner: My Lords, the central contract for the NHS computer Connecting for Health was set at £6.2 billion; it remains at that figure, as the National Audit Office report showed last week.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, given the results of devolution to Scotland and Wales, will the Government now consider some devolution to England?

Lord Warner: My Lords, that is a little wide of the mark in terms of this Question.

Representation of the People (Form of Canvass) (England and Wales) Regulations 2006

Representation of the People (Form of Canvass) (Scotland) Regulations 2006

Collection of Fines (Final Scheme) Order 2006

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, I beg to move the three Motions standing in my name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 25 May and 7 June and the draft order laid before the House on 20 April be approved. [25th and 29th Reports from the Joint Committee] [Considered in Grand Committee on 19 June].—(Lord Evans of Temple Guiting.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Mobile Homes Act 1983 (Amendment of Schedule 1) (England) Order 2006

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 24 May be approved [28th Report from the Joint Committee] [Considered in Grand Committee on 19 June].—(Lord Bassam of Brighton.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Parliamentary Costs Bill [HL]

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
	The Bill is a consolidation measure. It will bring into a single statute provisions from six mid-19th century Acts relating to the costs of proceedings on private Bills of Parliament. These are: the House of Commons Costs Taxation Act 1847; the House of Lords Costs Taxation Act 1849; the Parliamentary Costs Act 1865; the Parliamentary Costs Act 1867; the Parliamentary Costs Act 1871; and the House of Commons Costs Taxation Act 1879.
	The Acts concern the regulation of the costs of the parliamentary agents, who are the legal advisers authorised by Parliament to act for the parties on proceedings on Private Bills. The Acts also deal with the settlement of costs between the parties. The Bill includes provision to give effect to the handful of recommendations made by the Law Commissions for some minor technical changes to the law which they consider necessary in order to produce a satisfactory consolidation. My department has consulted on the Bill and the Law Commissions' recommendations.
	As always, I am very grateful to those at the Law Commissions who have worked on the Bill and to those who responded to the consultation on its content. If your Lordships are content to give the Bill a Second Reading, it will be referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills in the usual way. I commend the Bill to the House.

Earl Ferrers: My Lords, perhaps I may ask the noble and learned Lord—

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I must put the Question first.
	Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Falconer of Thoroton.)

Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I apologise to the noble and learned Lord. Perhaps I may ask him why the Bill comes down in the name of the Lord Falconer of Thoroton and not in the name of the Lord Chancellor.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, because that is my name and the Lord Chancellor has to promote consolidation Bills.
	On Question, Bill read a second time; and referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills.

Jubilee Line Case Review

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, I wish to make a Statement in relation to the review of the investigation of criminal proceedings relating to the Jubilee Line case.
	On 22 March 2005 the case of Regina v Rayment and Others was terminated at the Central Criminal Court after it had been running since June 2003. The prosecution announced its decision not to oppose a defence application to discharge the jury and subsequently offered no evidence. The defendants were then acquitted.
	Immediately afterwards I announced that I was referring the matter to the Chief Inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service under Section (2)(1)(b) of the Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate Act 2000. I asked the chief inspector: to review the circumstances surrounding the prosecution commonly known as the Jubilee Line case; to ascertain the factors leading to the decision to terminate; to consider what steps the prosecution could have taken to avoid that outcome; and to make recommendations aimed at preventing this happening again. The chief inspector's final report has today been published. Copies have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
	The report contains a detailed, but not comprehensive, analysis of the case. The constraints imposed by the remit of Her Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate means the report inevitably focuses on the role of the prosecution, whilst aiming to give as balanced a view as possible of what occurred. The chief inspector also requested Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary to provide expert advice and analysis on the police work in this case, particularly the investigation. The work they did was used to inform the report which is published today. Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary will also be publishing separately its own stand-alone report.
	The review team was also able to conduct individual interviews with 11 jurors in the case, and a group interview with eight of those jurors. They were assisted in this task by Professor Sally Lloyd-Bostock and Dr Cheryl Thomas of Birmingham University, who have conducted previous research into juries. This enabled the review team to obtain the benefit of the jurors' experience, whilst at the same time ensuring a proper distance between the jurors and the inspectorate.
	The report concludes that the collapse of the trial was the cumulative effect of mistakes and shortcomings by a number of agencies and individuals responsible for the case, which tested the adversarial system, as well as the jury system, beyond breaking point. The review also concludes that the decision to end the case was inevitable and correct in the light of legal authorities, having regard to the circumstances prevailing at the time. The report highlights three specific issues which it sees as having had a major contribution towards the termination of the proceedings: the decision to include count two, conspiracy to defraud London Underground Limited; the slow and disjointed nature of the proceedings; and the illness of one of the defendants.
	I very much welcome the valuable and detailed analysis by the chief inspector and his team. I pay tribute to the thoroughness of their work. I note the important conclusion that the decision to terminate the case was correct.
	Views may differ as to what conclusions are drawn from the analysis on, for example, whether we should always have a jury in a case of serious and complex fraud. I will return to that subject later.
	My overriding purpose in establishing the review was to ensure that we have done, and continue to do, all we can to ensure that there is no repetition of the events which led to the collapse of this case, particularly so far as the prosecuting authorities are concerned.
	Investigation and subsequent prosecution of this case was spread over a long period, from 1997 to 2005. Some key decisions made at an early stage had a significant impact on the future handling of the case and, with the benefit of hindsight, can be seen to have created difficulties. I accept that there is justified criticism of some aspects of the prosecution.
	Because, as I have said, the review report inevitably focuses on the CPS, and I am the Minister accountable for the CPS, it is right for me to draw the House's attention to the steps which have been taken to improve the handling of these cases within the CPS, as well as changes in the external environment. I accept the report's conclusion that fraud work within the CPS has not always been recognised as requiring a degree of dedicated resource and expertise. That is now being rectified, with the establishment of a separate and specialist fraud prosecution division within CPS London, a move welcomed by the report.
	A wider issue is that of the case management and review arrangements which were in place during the duration of the Jubilee Line case. When I was appointed Attorney-General, it became apparent to me that the arrangements for supervising lawyers who had day-to-day control of serious and complex cases, and of reviewing the quality of their decisions, were not adequate. In particular, the culture had evolved where it was believed that only a lawyer who had read all—and I mean all—the papers could take a decision on the case. The disadvantages of this approach had already been the subject of discussion between my predecessor as Attorney-General and the then DPP, now Mr Justice Calvert-Smith. I signalled a new approach in a Written Parliamentary Answer on 27 February 2003. This enabled more senior lawyers within the CPS, including the DPP, to be involved in the decision-making process, or to take decisions on the basis of detailed briefing and consideration of the key material but without having to read all the often very voluminous papers. The effect of this change would be, as I said in the Answer, to enable greater input by senior lawyers into the most critical decisions that the service faces.
	In addition, and after discussion with me, the current DPP has established a system of greater review by senior management of prosecuting decisions. In particular, he has established a system of case management panels. These are held on a monthly basis and enable a panel of senior lawyers to act as a "critical friend" to the lawyers handling a case. The panels, which have been in operation since September 2005, have already proved their worth in strengthening the presentation of cases, identifying any potential weaknesses and, in some cases, shortening the predicted trial lengths. This is especially important given the report's criticism that the Jubilee Line case was allowed to run without such senior management control. The CPS is also developing a new case management and case quality assurance system, particularly for serious and complex cases.
	More widely within the criminal justice system, Ministers and the judiciary have agreed the criminal case management framework which clearly sets out the responsibilities of all those involved in trials; and the then Lord Chief Justice issued a protocol on the management of heavy and complex cases in March 2005. These developments, combined with revised disclosure protocols and my own revised guidelines to prosecutors on disclosure, combine to make a very different system from that which was in operation during the Jubilee Line trial.
	The report makes 11 recommendations. They are set out in detail in the report and I will not take time repeating them. They have been considered by Government and the agencies involved. The substance of all the recommendations are accepted, save for recommendation 10, which will require further discussions between Ministers and the senior judiciary.
	Earlier in my Statement I said that I would come back to the issue of jury trials for serious and complex fraud cases. We have had extensive debates in this House and in the other place about the Government's established policy that there should be the opportunity in some serious and complex fraud cases for those trials to be heard without a jury. The Jubilee Line report concludes that the circumstances of this case were so unusual that it cannot be relied on directly to support the case either for dispensing with, or retaining, juries. It also concludes that the case was not intrinsically of such seriousness or complexity that it would necessarily have been accepted by the Serious Fraud Office as falling within its criteria for taking on cases, nor that it would necessarily have met the conditions set out in Section 43 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
	I should say that I take a different view. I am very clear that no blame for the termination of the case should fall on the shoulders of the individual jurors; rather, they are to be commended for their commitment and attention. Nevertheless, I believe the case illustrates a good deal about the challenges of presenting long and complex cases in front of a jury.
	My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General for making his Statement. It is based upon an extremely important document, which is the responsibility of Mr Stephen Wooler, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service. It could not, therefore, be a more authoritative answer to the question the noble and learned Lord posed to Mr Wooler.
	The Attorney-General has freely admitted to your Lordships' House today that, over a long period, he has not had confidence in the jury system, long established in this country, in certain classes of fraud trial. Whatever else this report establishes, however, it does not support the contention, in this particular case, that the jury had anything whatever to do with what went wrong.
	The report was embargoed until lunchtime so I have not had the opportunity to make a thorough analysis of it; but there are one or two points I would like to make by reading from the executive summary and certain paragraphs that appear later. Paragraph 5 of the executive summary says, as has the Attorney-General, that the length of the trial was attributable to three factors: first, and I shall come back to this later, the decision by the prosecution to include a count in the indictment of conspiracy to defraud; secondly, to use Mr Wooler's own words,
	"the slow and disjointed nature of the court proceedings";
	and thirdly, the illness of the defendant, Mr Mark Skinner.
	In the previous paragraph, Mr Wooler says the following:
	"The size and nature of the case was not such as to make it intrinsically unmanageable before a jury. The fundamental reason the trial had to be terminated was because it had gone on too long".
	At paragraph 7, he says:
	"This outcome was not a systemic failure of the criminal justice system or the nature of jury trial. What happened was the cumulative effect of mistakes and shortcomings by agencies and individuals within the system".
	The Attorney-General has informed your Lordships' House this afternoon that he is now fully seized of those shortcomings, and has taken steps already, and will take further steps, to make sure that they do not occur again. I welcome that statement.
	There is one further point worth drawing to your Lordships' attention about the jury in this trial. Your Lordships will recall that the noble and learned Lord made reference to two expert professors who assisted Mr Wooler in certain discussions that were held with the members of the jury. At paragraph 1.40, Mr Wooler concludes, with reference to the jury:
	"Collectively, they appeared even at the time of our interview with them to have a good grip of the evidence and the issues, particularly allowing for the fact that many months had passed since they had last heard any evidence".
	Perhaps, for completeness, I should turn finally to the way Mr Wooler himself sums up the role of the jury in the context of his inquiry. On page ii of the preface to the report, he writes:
	"I have been conscious throughout the review that the outcome of the Jubilee Line case is regarded in many quarters as relevant to the current debate about the suitability of juries to try charges of fraud, and in particular the proposal to implement section 43 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. In reality, the circumstances of the Jubilee Line case were so unusual that it cannot be relied on directly to support the case either for dispensing with, or retaining, juries".
	I hope that the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General recognises the force of that conclusion. I do not expect him to draw back from his views about the role of juries in fraud cases; but I hope that he accepts that this Jubilee Line case does not in any way advance his cause in that direction.
	Earlier, I mentioned that one of the three reasons why the trial went on for a long time was the decision by the prosecution to include on the indictment the offence of conspiracy to defraud. Your Lordships may recall that, in the debates on the Fraud Bill earlier this year, both the Opposition and the Liberal Democrats strongly opposed the retention of conspiracy to defraud as a common law offence. We drew support in that view from the Law Commission, which, in recasting the whole of the law on fraud, said that the offence of conspiracy to defraud was no longer necessary. It is interesting to note that Mr Wooler, in analysing the count 2 issue in his report, came to the following conclusion at paragraph 8(v), which states that,
	"the evidence of dealing with count 2"—
	the conspiracy to defraud process—
	"was spread over some ten months. Had it not been included the prosecution case would have been completed during October 2003 rather than August 2004, and in those circumstances the scope for other factors to have affected the trial would have been significantly less. Moreover, it did not add materially to the totality of the alleged criminality, particularly when account is taken of the concessions the prosecution were forced to make in the course of the evidence".
	Mr Wooler's judgment was made in the context of the old law on fraud. That conclusion, together with the strong support of the Law Commission in the context of the new law that is about to come on to the statute book, makes out, in my submission, a very strong case for the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General to instruct the Director of Public Prosecutions to use conspiracy to defraud only in those cases where there is simply no other alternative and, within a very short period, to conclude that it should be struck off the statute book.
	We owe a great debt to Mr Wooler, who has concluded his task expeditiously and with great thoroughness. There are important lessons for the CPS to learn and it is clear from what the noble and learned Lord said that he has learnt them and that, in his supervisory role, he will now have a duty to make sure that they are implemented. Meanwhile, those of us who believe in the principle of jury trial for all criminal cases are reassured that, in this case, jury trial was not at fault.

Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, we welcome the Statement from the Government and congratulate the chief inspector, Mr Wooler, on the comprehensive nature of his report within the constraints set on him. It was particularly helpful that he was able, with the assistance of Professor Sally Lloyd-Bostock and Dr Cheryl Thomas, to interview the members of the jury. I also welcome the Government's acceptance of the substance of the 11 recommendations.
	Some matters of importance in the ongoing debate on complex and lengthy trials were comprehensively illuminated. There were six counts. The fundamental flaw in the proceedings was count 2: conspiracy to defraud. The report states at paragraph 11.95 that,
	"count 1 was dealt with relatively expeditiously by both sides, and the evidence on the conspiracy to corrupt charges counts 3-6 was largely agreed by the defence making the admissions",
	that the Crown sought.
	The flawed decision was to bring an essentially vague charge of common law conspiracy to defraud in count 2 on the basis that the wrongful possession of commercially sensitive information by the defendants damaged the economic interests of London Underground Ltd. The decision was taken initially by the British Transport Police. However, although prosecuting counsel was initially ambivalent about continuing with the charge, as the report tells us, nevertheless he proceeded. As is the risk with the charge of common law conspiracy to defraud—as the report points out in paragraph 8(iii) of the executive summary—as the case progressed the Crown shifted its ground. The summary states that,
	"there were a number of changes in the way the Crown stated its position, in particular on what they accepted that they had to prove".
	In its final formulation, says the inspector:
	"It was inevitable that this would involve much detailed and repetitive examination of routine financial documents with witnesses".
	In the debates on the Fraud Bill both the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, and I pointed out the fundamental weakness of common law conspiracy, which the Law Commission has recommended be abolished. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord will forgive me if I remind him of what I said on 19 July last year:
	"To retain the broad common law offence of conspiracy to defraud is to leave things in the worst possible state. At times I have tried unsuccessfully to limit the scope of a conspiracy offence to the opening of prosecuting counsel, but I have not necessarily been successful in that effort. In one particular case I consider the ground had shifted over the course of a four-month trial, and that at the end I was being accused of something I was not being accused of at the beginning. That is the sort of problem which can be derived from the common law offence".—[Official Report, 19/7/05; col. 1442.]
	I had no knowledge then that the Jubilee Line case was a prime example of the Crown shifting its ground in the course of the trial.
	The prosecution sought to blame the defence for the trial becoming unmanageable as carrying out a "war of attrition". That is the sort of criticism that one frequently hears made against defence lawyers in all sorts of cases. However, it was not the defence who were responsible for the,
	"slow and disjointed nature of the proceedings".
	The inspector says in terms in paragraph 11.94 that the prosecution had an almost reflex reaction to what the defence was saying, so that it had a real reluctance to look at the merits of whatever the defence might say. As a result, there was a high degree of tension between the prosecution and the defence teams. But so far as the defence teams were concerned, the report concludes:
	"There was no deliberate time-wasting, prolixity or unjustifiable obstructiveness as is hinted at in the phrase 'war of attrition'".
	The responsibility for this trial failing is placed fairly and squarely upon the prosecution and there is no significant criticism of the defence in the report. The report finds that the jury discharged its duties in a thorough and comprehensive manner. The inspector says that it appeared months later that collectively the jury had a good grip of the evidence and the issues. There remained with it, he said, a real commitment to see through its period of public service. So the jury bears no responsibility.
	It is disappointing that, in the face of those conclusions, the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General told us that he took a different view on juries in long, complex fraud trials. That is not surprising. The Government persist in trying to undermine the structure of the criminal justice system. Not only do the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary attack judges directly for their decisions, which they do not appear ever to have read, but the Attorney General also seeks to limit the role of the one institution, the jury, that commands public confidence as a protector of our liberties.
	I have a number of questions. Why in 1997—a significant date—was the Fraud Investigation Group, set up originally as part of the CPS, wound down and assimilated in central case work, and the authority to sign transfers of cases to the Crown Court devolved to grade six lawyers? Why did a culture develop in the succeeding years within the CPS which allowed a lack of engagement with and responsibility for prosecutions at levels above that of the case lawyer? This trial had been running for nearly two years before the DPP became involved and started to oversee what was going wrong with it. Is it not a disgrace that the report concludes:
	"The other notable feature of the period spanned by the case, 1997-2005, is the persistent lack of clarity in relation to where responsibility for decision making lay, and consequently accountability"?
	When will the new fraud prosecution service be fully operational, because it is not yet, and what will its relationship be with the Serious Fraud Office? The report says that re-establishing the CPS capacity to handle substantial fraud cases will require significant investment. What does the Treasury say about that? Perhaps the £25 million wasted on these proceedings might have funded the necessary reforms.

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their welcome of the report and for what they have said, as I did, about the very conscientious and thorough work by Mr Stephen Wooler and his team. I have no doubt that we shall return to this report in the context of other debates, so this may be only a taster of comments to be made and conclusions to be drawn from it. I am very content that that should be so.
	The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, referred to jury trial. I had not intended that there should be a debate on that today, nor do I anticipate that we shall have one. In my Statement I frankly, and rightly—as I hope noble Lords will agree—acknowledged what Mr Wooler had said in his report: that he did not believe that the circumstances of this case being so unusual justified the case one way or another. I said that I took a different view on what conclusions to draw. I absolutely stand by my remark that,
	"the case illustrates a good deal about the challenges of presenting long and complex cases in front of a jury".
	I also absolutely acknowledge, as I said, that no blame is to be placed on the shoulders of the jury. On the contrary, it is to be commended for its commitment and attention. No doubt we will return to that and to the implications of a long case, whatever the reasons for that, where the consequences become more difficult because jurors are unable, for very good human reasons, to continue to attend the trial.
	Both noble Lords raised the question of conspiracy to defraud. They are right to draw attention to the report's finding that it was wrong to include count 2. I absolutely acknowledge that. In the context of the Fraud Bill we debated whether the common law offence of conspiracy to defraud should be repealed. I make the following observations. Of course, I note very carefully what is said in the report. Both noble Lords will recall that in that debate I undertook to give instructions to prosecutors about the care that they should take in using conspiracy to defraud and gave some examples of circumstances which would be in guidance that I would issue. I also indicated that I thought it was very important that they should record their reasons carefully so that they could be visited by other senior management. That is one of the recommendations that Mr Wooler makes. The report does not recommend that the common law offence of conspiracy to defraud should be repealed. I still believe that we were right not to do so in the Fraud Bill.
	Among the very important views that affected my consideration were those not just of the prosecutors but of the very important Rose committee, presided over by Lord Justice Rose, who was at the time one of the most experienced criminal judges in the Court of Appeal but has since retired. Noble Lords will recall very clearly that his view was that it would be a big mistake—I paraphrase but the substance is no different from what was said—to abolish the common law offence of conspiracy to defraud. But of course we will look carefully at that.
	On that point, I simply add that the real problem, as Mr Wooler's report shows, was that there was no attempt by the prosecution to demonstrate what loss flowed from the alleged conspiracy to defraud. Having said that, on two occasions the judge found that it was a proper charge.
	The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, as well as repeating those points, asked several questions. I see that time is up, so I will have to come back to him on the question about 1997. The culture that no one but the person who has read all the papers could make the decision flowed from a report, I think, by his honour Judge Butler, into a particular death by custody case. As I said in my Statement, I changed that when I became Attorney-General. I suggest that we return to the relationship with the Serious Fraud Office when we release the report of the fraud review, which I hope will be before the Summer Recess.

Lord Borrie: My Lords, at the beginning of the Statement, my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General referred to the questioning in the course of the review by Mrs Sally Lloyd-Bostock and her colleague of the jurors in the case. He also indicated the outcome of that questioning. Unfortunately, it is not possible for us to compare and contrast that case and those conclusions with either any other similar case or indeed any other jury case. That is because, as my noble and learned friend is well aware, Section 8 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 generally forbids any questioning of jurors during or after the case.
	I wonder what the present attitude of Her Majesty's Government is to research, perhaps academic research under appropriate safeguards, with the Lord Chief Justice's permission in particular cases, and to widening out the possibility of questioning jurors. Both Opposition spokesmen today have made something of the fact that the conclusions were in a certain way and in a certain direction in relation to this particular fraud case. Whether it be a fraud case, or another type of case, on which there is a difference of view as to the comprehension of the jurors of the facts of the case or whatever, surely it would be desirable to open up somewhat the mysteries of the jury room and to permit suitable academic research under suitable safeguards.

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right that we do not permit research into juries in the way in which he has identified. This was the subject of a detailed consultation paper issued by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor. It discusses the competing arguments about not opening up the jury because that might interfere with the confidence that is expressed in juries and it might create problems with their deliberations, and the point that he has powerfully made. I will make sure that he sees a copy of that and of the Government's response in due course.

Lord Lyell of Markyate: My Lords, before the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General goes too far down the road of any idea of questioning juries, will he please remember the attitude of the late Lord Taylor of Gosforth, probably the Lord Chief Justice with the widest criminal experience almost since the war, who was deeply opposed to any such opening up? One should approach it at the very least with the greatest caution.
	I join other noble Lords in congratulating Mr Stephen Wooler, with whom I worked for many years, on a fine piece of work. However, I look forward to reading it because, unfortunately, although the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General told us that it was embargoed only until lunchtime, I was personally told by the Library and the Printed Paper Office, right up until half past two, that it was not available until after the Statement. That sort of thing ought not to happen.
	I have said many times that when complex fraud cases go wrong it is virtually always because of one of two things: the problem lies with the prosecution or the judge, or both. In this case it was plainly with the prosecution, largely because it added counts of fraud to what the case was really about: corruption. That was being said when I asked questions on the street within two days of the collapse of the case. I hope that this will in no way be regarded as giving any grist to the mill of the Government's policy of trying to diminish the use of juries.

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, first, I entirely accept the noble and learned Lord's counsel of caution in opening up the jury. The Government accept that there are considerable issues to be debated there. Secondly, on the report, I understand that the procedures operating between the two Houses may have been why the noble and learned Lord did not have the report. As I said at the outset, however, I have no doubt that this will not be the last time that we look at this report in this House. I am happy to respond outside the House to any questions any noble Lord might wish to raise with me about it.
	On the noble and learned Lord's observations on the cause, as I have said, I entirely accept what the report says about the conduct of the prosecution. The noble and learned Lord said that he heard "on the street" within two days what the causes were. I heard many things "on the street" about this case, which is why I asked Mr Stephen Wooler to look into it and to give us an authoritative view.

Lord Elystan-Morgan: My Lords, I join those noble Lords who have respectfully urged the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General to be wary of diminishing in any way at all the invaluable role of the jury in criminal trials. As one who has not had the opportunity of reading the report, I apologise beforehand if the matters I briefly raise are specifically covered.
	First, does the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General accept that the court has a substantial role to play in a pre-trial review? We are all magnificent Solomons of judgment with the benefit of hindsight, but it is sometimes fairly easy, with intelligent foresight, to smell out the likely difficulties that will arise and thereby perhaps save a great deal of court time.
	Secondly, on the question of conspiracy to defraud, with all the difficulties and complexities that have surrounded this offence for a long time, had specific requests been made in this case for specific information on the factual basis of the prosecution case for count two? I know not; I ask the question rhetorically.

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, on the implications of this report for whether, as the Government have made clear, we proceed with a limited-right opportunity to proceed without juries in serious fraud cases, that point has been made and I will not say anything further about it this afternoon.
	I entirely agree with the noble Lord, who speaks from judicial experience, about the important role that the court has to play in pre-trial reviews. Of course, since this case started, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, the former Lord Chief Justice, has produced his protocol on complex fraud cases which emphasises the significance of case management, and further steps have been taken. I am confident that case management would be more rigorously controlled on a future occasion. I make no criticism of the judge in this case but the system has changed.
	Secondly, so far as concerns the conspiracy to defraud count, the problem was that the investigation proceeded on the basis that the British Transport Police would not seek to discover whether actual loss was caused to London Underground as a result of what it said was a conspiracy to defraud. As a consequence, substantial requests for information were made, looking at individual contracts to see whether it could be shown that no loss was caused. During the case, a number of requests were made to the prosecution to elucidate and a number of requests were made to the defence to indicate what their defence was. It was quite a long, drawn-out process, as the noble Lord will see when he gets an opportunity to read the report.

Lord Berkeley: My Lords, speaking as a lay observer of these legal niceties, I thought that my noble and learned friend's Statement was very helpful and that it demonstrated a real commitment to learn from this case. There were many problems in constructing the Jubilee Line, as there were with the Thames Barrier, which happened in much the same place a few years earlier, involving change, delay, cost overrun and, I suggest, political interference and labour relations. Such problems have ended up in court. When I read about these long and complicated fraud prosecutions, which often seem to end in failure after many years and heaven knows how many millions of pounds, I compare them with what has happened in the Enron case in the United States. Can we learn something from that in terms of getting things done speedily and satisfactorily and in getting a few prosecutions?

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, that is a very important observation. At the moment, a substantial fraud review is in place. It is reporting to me and to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and I hope that I will be able to produce that report for the House before the Summer Recess. The review is looking at a number of recommendations, which those who have produced the report believe, if implemented, will enable us to bring fraud cases to trial more speedily and efficiently. Fraud costs the economy huge sums of money. It is a crime and it is important that it should be capable of being properly brought to justice before the courts. We must continue to look for effective ways of ensuring that that happens.

Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, what discussions have taken place with the Law Society on this important matter?

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, there have been substantial discussions on how to run fraud trials, whether there should be juries and how best to manage criminal cases. I have participated in a number of those discussions, together with officials and other Ministers, including my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor. I personally have not spoken to the Law Society about this case since the report was produced, but of course I am happy to do so.

Lord Anderson of Swansea: My Lords, the proceedings were slow and disjointed and they were certainly very lengthy and very costly. We understand that the jurors took their responsibilities very seriously. What did they tell the academics about their response to what happened? Was there a degree of resentment and a lack of morale at leaving them, as it were, in mid-air? Furthermore, will there be significant new investment in the Crown Prosecution Service and, if so, where will it be? Is my noble and learned friend confident, for example, that the CPS, with the resources available to it, is able to offer a package of remuneration to attract experts of sufficient competence to make in-house decisions?

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, it is clear that members of the jury were disheartened, to say the least, that the case was stopped. I think they made that clear to the researchers.
	On the CPS, substantial investment has taken place in a number of areas. I am pleased to say that significant reorganisation of the Crown Prosecution Service has taken place, not just in relation to fraud. For example, its central casework directorate, which deals with the most serious cases, is now organised into divisions that deal with terrorism and with serious organised crime, and it is working closely with the new Serious Organised Crime Agency on other serious cases. A great deal has taken place. I am confident that under its present leadership the CPS will work hard to bring justice to the people of this country.

The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford: My Lords, does the noble and learned Lord accept that not only is a jury disheartened when a case such as this collapses, but that there is a big issue with public confidence. If the public perceive that it is not possible to call fraudulent and corrupt behaviour in the corporate sector to account, they will feel a deep injustice when, day by day, they are continually called to account in front of the law for all kinds of small things. Corporately, we have a duty to see what needs to be done to ensure that that lack of confidence and sense of injustice are addressed.

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, I agree with absolutely every word that the right reverend Prelate has said. We need to do that. He draws an absolutely correct contrast between what can happen to people, for example, on a small fraud, such as benefit fraud, when one can easily be brought before the court, and what may happen with allegations of fraud on a much bigger scale, perhaps in the City or in other commercial areas.

Government of Wales Bill

Report received.
	Clause 1 [The Assembly]:

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: moved Amendment No. 1:
	Page 1, line 8, leave out subsection (2) and insert—
	"( ) The Assembly is to consist of 80 members elected through the single transferable vote from multi-member constituencies."

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, Amendment No. 1 is grouped with Amendments Nos. 2, 3, 4, 7, 8 and 10. The purpose of the amendments is to install the single transferable vote system—voting in proportionality. The topic was discussed at some length in Committee. I do not intend to debate this at great length, although it would be quite wrong, on Report, not to draw attention to the importance of ending up with what we regard as the best system of election to the Welsh Assembly. We are particularly exercised by the importance of the fairness of the voting system and the proportionality in the electoral system.
	Amendment No. 1 covers the possibility, at any rate, of an 80-Member Assembly, elected by the single transferable vote. Amendment No. 2 specifies that Members would be elected in multi-Member constituencies. Amendment No. 3 deals with the situation in which two votes would not be cast—as in the Bill at present—but just one vote cast preferentially. Amendment No. 4 is consequential on the above amendments. Amendment No. 7 leaves out Clause 8, which will be necessary to achieve the objective of an STV system to elect Members to the Welsh Assembly. Amendment No. 8 removes Clause 9 and inserts a new clause that specifies that each vote will use the single transferable vote system, which indicates voters' order of preference and eliminates prior choice. We shall come to that in Amendment No. 5, which we will debate after this group of amendments. Amendment No. 10 installs an 80-Member Assembly elected by single transferable vote.
	These amendments eliminate the present additional member system of election to the Assembly and the system proposed by the Government as an alternative to the STV system recommended by the Richard commission, where the first-past-the-post system of election in constituencies and a regional top-up list apply as they do at the moment. Noble Lords will remember that we had a vote in Committee about whether candidates could stand in the same region as they stood in for a first-past-the-post election, which is the status quo. I think that was the only vote carried in Committee.
	This system overcomes the difficulties with the AMS system, whether carried out under the status quo or under the system proposed by the Government, because it means that there are not two classes of candidates. Everyone is voted to the National Assembly by the same system. There is no difference and no way to say, "This Member was elected by a system that makes him a second-class Member". Everyone has the equality of the same system. That is the benefit of the STV system. We debated the subject at considerable length in Committee, and I make no apologies for returning to it on Report. I beg to move.

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, I support these amendments. I shall tell the House why I am convinced that the Government must rethink in this direction. We have a great step forward here. It is not as big a step as the Liberal Democrat party would have wished, but at least we are moving towards a Parliament, a Senedd, that will have more responsibilities, possibly on the Scottish model, within a few years. With additional responsibilities, we need sufficient Members of the Assembly to allow them to carry out their duties thoroughly. If we look at local authorities in Wales, very few of them have fewer than 40 or 50 councillors because they need to share their responsibilities. I suggest that the National Assembly for Wales is at least as important as any county council in Wales. According to the Government's plans, 60 Members will be elected. Of them, two will immediately be out of the ordinary running of the Assembly and will be the Presiding Officer and the Deputy Presiding Officer. Then there will be 12 Ministers who will have specific responsibilities, which do not include the scrutiny of legislation. So we are down to 46 Members, which is less than nearly every county council in Wales. I suggest that with the additional responsibilities, it is time for the Government to agree that this is a reasonable amendment.
	One fact brought up time and again is that we have a bicameral system in Westminster whereby the House of Lords exercises scrutiny responsibilities, which it does very effectively. Wales does not have a second Chamber, which means that there is no similar level of scrutiny. With additional Members, it would have people who could scrutinise legislation far more thoroughly.
	As my noble friend Lord Livsey stated, an STV system, a proportional system of election, will be far more representative and will dispose once and for all of that lack of satisfaction with the dual candidatures—a list candidature or a constituency candidature. With an STV system in multi-Member constituencies every Member has the same responsibilities and is elected with the same amount of authority.
	We could of course go to a first-past-the-post system throughout Wales, but that has already been rejected as being unfair, inadequate and unrepresentative. You can have 40 per cent of the electors, or, say, 36 per cent as in the UK elections of last year, who can elect the government of the country. We say that a fair system would mean that 40 per cent is 40 per cent of the Members, and with 50 per cent we will have about 50 per cent of the Members. That type of electoral system exists throughout Europe. Why do we have to be the odd people out in Europe?
	I went to the opening of the new Assembly building in Cardiff. I was delighted to see that it was a circular chamber—not adversarial but a chamber where people were going to gather together and discuss in a consensus the needs of Wales. The same goes for the Parliament in Scotland. STV is to be adopted there for its next set of local elections. So democracy moves; it cannot be static. Democracy must always evolve and move forward. Adopting this new system—new to us—of the single transferable vote would be our recognition that we, too, are still an evolving democracy. With those words, I support the amendment.

Lord Rowlands: My Lords, I draw the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, to the fact that the Richard commission recommended STV and an 80-Member seat on the transfer of full primary powers to the Assembly and not in the context of this Bill.
	Amendment No. 2, subsection (2), reads:
	"Each Assembly constituency shall be comprised of no more than one tenth and no less than one twenty-fifth of the eligible electorate".
	Could he in practical terms tell us under the current electorate what would be the smallest size of the constituency and what would be the largest under his proposals?
	Thirdly, I would like to say to him and to the Liberal Democrats that I do not believe that you can possibly suggest that these amendments fall within the scope of the original settlement. The proposal is to increase the membership to 80, to completely and utterly change the electoral system, and, incidentally, reduce the voting age to 16. In the absence of a referendum on these issues, I could not possibly support them.

Lord Trimble: My Lords, the core of these amendments refers to the single transferable vote system, proportional representation. As your Lordships may know, it is a subject in which on an earlier occasion I claimed a certain expertise. It has operated in Northern Ireland since 1973. I fought approximately 10 elections under the single transferable vote system, and, indeed, in one election was part of a very successful vote management arrangement whereby we maximised our results quite significantly and achieved many more seats than mere proportionality would have given us. Like all electoral systems, it can be manipulated.
	I appreciate that this matter was debated in Committee, and I shall try to avoid the temptation to speak at any length, but I want to make some points on which I hold very strong opinions—drawn from experience. I am not hostile to proportionality as such; I am quite content to see proportionality at district and regional level; but I am very strongly opposed to any attempt to have proportionality in another place.
	The great advantage of the first-past-the-post system is that it produces Governments, not coalitions. Coalitions are intrinsically weak and undemocratic, because they end up with decisions taken after an election by horse-trading between politicians rather than decisions taken by the electorate in the election. It is no small part of the economic and other success of this country that we have retained the capacity to have Governments able to govern. We sometimes do not like what they do, but that is much better than having coalitions, where decisions are not taken, issues are not faced and necessary changes do not occur. I could go on at length on that matter, but it is important that we limit proportionality to district and regional level.
	Then we have to choose what proportional system we are to adopt. I find it interesting that Liberal Democrats, who tend to be great advocates of European practice, do not draw the appropriate lesson. Do they have single transferable votes in Europe? No they do not. They have proportional systems, but your Lordships will know what those systems are, so I do not need to go into them. Indeed, one of those European proportional systems was adopted for Wales and Scotland and is now being criticised.
	Scotland, we are told, is now adopting STV for local government. It has now become the only place in the world that has ever voluntarily chosen STV. STV was imposed in the Republic of Ireland by this House—this Parliament—against the will of the people. STV was imposed in Northern Ireland by this Parliament against the will of the people. I think that the same was done in Malta. That is all. It is not a good system. In my criticism, I shall mention just a couple of points. It promotes fights within parties. In a multi-Member constituency, if your party has, say, 30 to 40 per cent of the electorate, you would count yourself as having two quotas.

Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, perhaps I may ask the noble Lord a question about the Republic of Ireland. He says that the STV system was imposed on it. Am I not right in thinking that there was a referendum in which the people of the Republic of Ireland decided to keep that system?

Lord Trimble: My Lords, the noble Lord is quite correct. There were two referenda, two attempts by the Irish Government—both under de Valera, I think—to go back to the first-past-the-post system. It is quite correct that on both occasions, the proposals failed because people did not want to go back to that system. I do not think that you can read into that a positive preference for STV against other proportional systems. My comment on STV having been imposed goes back to 1920, when it was introduced. I take the point that is made, but I do not think it affects my argument. Essentially, my point is about the negative effects of STV compared to other proportional systems.

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, perhaps I may interrupt the noble Lord to ask: does not Northern Ireland also have STV for its elections to the European Parliament?

Lord Trimble: My Lords, indeed we do. We have it at that level—I forgot about that in my summary of the matter. We have also had STV at district council and regional level. I was drawing the distinction that it is undesirable at the parliamentary level. As for having it for the European Parliament, that tempts me to make comments about the nature of the European Parliament, its effectiveness and whether it is ever capable or likely to approach being capable of supporting or maintaining a government. There is too much to say about that.
	I was making a point about how STV encourages fights within parties. If you have a multi-Member constituency with, say, five Members and you get 30 to 40 per cent of the vote, or think that you will, you have two quotas. The conventional wisdom is that you run two existing quotas plus one in such a situation, because you cannot make gains if you do not run an extra quota. For those three candidates, who know that two of them will certainly be elected and that one has only a chance of being elected, the most important thing is to be among the two who will certainly be elected. It is easier to persuade existing party members to vote for you rather than for another member of the party, rather than converting persons who are not part of your party's support to support you.
	You then get considerable fights within parties. Parties can make some efforts to control that but it is not easy, because the other thing that happens is that the STV gives the elected Member much greater independence vis-à-vis the party itself. There is a benefit to being out of line with the party and to taking an independent line, because you gather publicity as a result. There is a comparative penalty to being a loyal party member. This is bad for political parties and for the health of democracy. Our democracy depends on political parties. We do not elect Parliaments or bodies of independent members. That ceased to happen hundreds of years ago. If you undermine parties, you weaken our democratic process.
	The system also promotes parochialism. It becomes necessary for people to maintain their base and constantly to cultivate their grass roots. I can understand Liberal Democrats' thinking that it is a good idea to do that, but that has impacts on what you do. One criticism that you might make of the Northern Ireland Assembly is that more than 80 per cent of the Members elected are also councillors. You dare not leave councils under an STV system. In the Irish Republic, most TDs—I do not know the exact figure—are also councillors. I can hear something being muttered at the end of the Chamber. I shall take an intervention.

Lord Shutt of Greetland: My Lords, that has been abolished.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, I remind noble Lords that we are on Report. We have been through Second Reading and Committee, in which we went into this sort of detail. I would be very grateful if the noble Lord could be not quite so discursive about the whole system but focus on the amendment, as we must on Report. Otherwise we will be here all night and all tomorrow night as well.

Lord Trimble: My Lords, I appreciate the criticism, and I shall try to conclude my comments. I ask the House to forgive me because I did not have the opportunity to contribute earlier, and this is a subject on which I have some views.
	I shall not go into the issue of parochialism, but I understand why they abolished the system in the Republic of Ireland. It produced a system where TDs stayed in the constituency and did not attend the Dail. It was recognised in the Irish Republic that it was having a very negative effect on accountability. Unfortunately, the promised legislation in the United Kingdom to end the dual mandate never surfaced, which is a great shame.
	I shall just make a last couple of points about another consequence of PR. Those who are starting off in politics in the STV system should try to ensure that their surnames begin with the letters A, B or C. There is a very strong alphabetical bias in this system. Again, I feel personally about that for obvious reasons. This is a very noted bias. I have also made the point that there is a very strong bias towards people being independent and continuing a career as an independent. It might be all right at local government, and it may not be too bad at regional level, but beyond that the effects of this system are really pernicious.

Lord Anderson of Swansea: My Lords, given the final remarks of the noble Lord and his useful experience of Ireland, perhaps I should declare an interest in that, as my surname begins with an A, I have benefited from this throughout my life. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, that in principle the architecture of a debating chamber should have an effect on consensus, or on the lack of it, but alas I have not noticed an effect on consensus in the Welsh Assembly arising from its particular architecture.
	There are a number of elements to the amendment; that is, the "80 Members", the "multi-Member constituencies" and the STV. On the 80 Members, let us bear in mind that the amendment suggests that this should be the system immediately after the Bill is implemented. However, the view of the Speaker of the Assembly is that the present workload—and, presumably, with the extension under this Bill—does not warrant additional membership. Naturally there are complaints from Members of the Assembly that they are overburdened. But the person who sits in the Chair and watches what goes on is convinced that the workload is such that, with changes in the way in which the Assembly operates, it can manage under the current responsibilities with the existing numbers. Perhaps, ultimately, we should move to 80 Members, but the case has certainly not been made out for it at present.
	I can be brief about the STV and multi-Member constituencies because the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, has made much of that case. In my political experience, there has been a certain magnificent obsession of Liberals, then Liberal Democrats, with electoral systems. I recall years ago, John Pardoe, the economics spokesman, who would give a sea, a litany of ills of our economy and end by saying, "All these ills would be ended if only we had proportional representation". I am not sure that Liberal Democrat Peers opposite would go quite that far. But one thing is certain: in multi-Member constituencies the valuable link between the Member and the constituency would be lost. For example, we used to have five Members on a regional basis in Wales. However, after a change in the electoral system for Members of the European Parliament, which was understandable because it was necessary as a result of European electoral law, we moved to having Wales as just one constituency. However hardworking those Members of the European Parliament are, I fear that some local attachment has gone. Fewer people now know who is their MEP. With the best will in the world, given the remoteness of Strasbourg and Brussels, it is difficult enough for MEPs to make a real impact. The new electoral system makes it more difficult.
	The noble Lord, Lord Trimble, has mentioned localism and the way in which it has an adverse effect on parties. We rehearsed some of those arguments in Committee. I will certainly not go through them now. We need to look very carefully at moving further along that road. To conclude, 80 Members may come; STV may come; but if it comes, let us at least be aware of some of the negative consequences which will certainly flow from it.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, the fact that the coalition in the Scots Parliament has opted to have STV for local government elections has been mentioned. In preparing for those elections, certainly in the constituency where I live, the very problems which the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, mentioned, are being discovered even before those elections take place. I wonder very much how the electorate will react to this system. I do not think that at the moment it looks very happy.

Lord Elystan-Morgan: My Lords, with great humility and respect, I suggest that we may be discussing the wrong question. The question is not whether STV is perfect: it clearly is not. The question is not whether it is laden with complexities and difficulties: it is. The question is whether the situation that obtains at the moment, and has obtained since the Government of Wales Act 1998, can possibly be regarded as tolerable. The Labour Government are to be congratulated on their chivalry and sense of justice in seeing to it that what otherwise probably would be a Labour hegemony in Cardiff could somehow be avoided. They created a system in good faith and I do not doubt that that was the approach of all parties at the time. But the result is that a party which gained in a first-past-the-post vote some three-quarters of the seats in Wales and three times as many as all the other parties put together finds that, from time to time, it is impossible to carry out its functions as a government. In addition to that, on the second ballot, a tonnage of votes cast for the Labour Party is not reflected in the membership of any additional candidate. That, I respectfully submit, is a wholly intolerable situation. It may well be that the Labour Party will say, "We will tolerate it for the moment", but it may well be too that the next few months and years will force it to a different conclusion.
	Parallel with those arguments is the question of membership. I believe wholeheartedly that a membership of 60 is much too small; 80 Members is the minimum number needed to do the job required of them. As the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, has reminded us, the maximum number of Members available to staff a host of committees and to carry out other functions is 46. With great respect to the Presiding Officer, the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, who is one of the most fascinating political commentators Wales has produced for a long time, I do not of necessity equate his words with holy writ in this or any other matter. Let us consider the position of local government in Wales. All but six of the 22 county councils in Wales have well over 60 Members. No lengthening of hours or further sitting days can make up for that difficulty.
	As I have said, the Labour Party is to be congratulated on its chivalry in creating this system and on its integrity, but it would score very low marks in its anticipation of realpolitik. Although this Bill is a vehicle which can be used for that purpose, I have no doubt that it will not do so. But I prophesy that the time will come when the Labour Party will have to return to this matter again and again.

Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, I shall be the soul of brevity, if not of wit. As the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, has said, I am well aware that this scheme was put forward in the Richard commission report. The noble Lord recommended an increase in membership of the Assembly from 60 to 80 and the establishment of the STV system of voting in elections. But the Government have not accepted that proposal either as a whole or in part—perhaps for some of the reasons advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Trimble.
	Regarding the numbers of Assembly Members, we have to bear in mind that their role will be very different under this Bill. No longer will they be members of the corporate body with executive as well as legislative responsibilities; they will be Members of the legislature holding, it is hoped, Ministers to account. I do not imagine that their workload will increase appreciably in the early stages and that the proposed increase in numbers can be justified on that account. In any case, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has pointed out, the Presiding Officer has stated that Assembly working hours and days can be extended to cope with an increased workload. So I humbly suggest that the proposals in these amendments are somewhat premature. They have already been considered by the Government and rejected, and indeed we debated them earlier in Committee.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am sorry that I was a little hesitant in rising, but I thought that other noble Lords still wished to participate in the debate, although to be fair we considered these issues extensively in Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Livsey, will recognise that he is not winning any greater support today than he did when he put forward these propositions in Committee.
	As to the question of whether the numbers should be increased, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, and my noble friend Lord Rowlands that when the Richard commission referred to 80 it was, of course, looking at the development of much greater powers for Wales, Part 4 of the Bill being enacted and a much fuller responsibility for the Assembly than will exist when this Bill becomes an Act of Parliament in the not too distant future. We do not see a case for the additional numbers.
	Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, is absolutely right. Much as we respect the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, and regret the fact that he is not in his place to participate in these discussions today, we do not regard his representations as those of holy writ; and when he indicates that he does not think the size of the Assembly needs to be increased, we do not have to take that as a complete conclusion to the position. He emphasised that the National Assembly is not unduly stretched in regard to its working hours and he mentioned that it works two afternoons a week, which is a fairly modest contribution. Of course we recognise that there is an appetite for work, and we have no doubt at all that additional Members would participate fully, but we cannot see at this point that additional Members are justified, which is one of the crucial parts of the amendments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, particularly in regard to Amendment No. 1.
	As to the question of STV, I am grateful to the noble Lord who made his first intervention in our deliberations today. We welcome him for that. I think we would have appreciated had he been here at Committee stage because he would have done his demolition job on STV much earlier. It is not for me to add any more to these issues, except to say that all electoral systems can be manipulated. I think we would all confess that all electoral systems have imperfections built into them. There is no such thing as a perfect representative electoral system—that is why these debates rage—but, by the same token, no one can advocate a new electoral system, such as STV, and make the automatic presumption that it is bound to be an improvement on first past the post. As the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, identified—and my noble friend Lord Rowlands also reflected on this point—STV has got imperfections. The Government do not see that it would improve the position.
	It was noticeable that in the opening remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, there was no reflection at all about what STV meant in terms of the relationship between the Member and the constituency or how large such constituencies would be. That is an important point. One of the great virtues of the concept of representative democracy as it has evolved in Britain—certainly with regard to the United Kingdom Parliament—is the link between the elected Member and constituents. Of course, STV, with its very large constituencies and with Members of Parliament from different parties claiming that they represent exactly the same constituency, raises all sorts of real issues with regard to representation and we do not think that the case has been made out.
	It has been an interesting debate which has ranged almost as widely as it did in Committee. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken—particularly those who, like the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, have spoken about their direct experience of STV. The noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, indicated that she has got direct experience of the preparation for STV. I give way to the noble Lord.

Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, the noble Lord is not defending the AMS system, is he? Is he aware that its biggest critics are the members of the Labour Party who have been elected to the Assembly? They seem to hanker after the red meat of first-past-the-post. Is the noble Lord defending AMS? Is he saying that we should continue to have that system in Wales for the foreseeable future and beyond?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, it is not my task to advocate AMS. I am merely indicating the weaknesses of the amendment. We are at Report stage, discussing a group of amendments which we debated extensively in Committee. The case has not been made, and I hope the noble Lord will feel that he can happily withdraw his amendment.

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, I am surprised at the length of the debate and the interest shown in it. It demonstrates that the present AMS system is very imperfect and that there is willingness to find a different way. The issue of the number in the Assembly is related to giving it more powers. There is no doubt that Orders in Council will mean a lot more work—not just two afternoons a week, I am sure. Other bodies, such as the Arbuthnott commission in Scotland, recommended STV. I shall come to that later.
	The noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, noted that there would be a difference between one-tenth and one-twenty-fifth. I cannot give him a precise answer now, but I will do so in writing, because I know the point is well researched.
	I recollect the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, speaking on this issue in Committee and was not surprised to hear him recount a number of his experiences in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland and the Republic were given an STV system of election in 1920 but it was abolished in Northern Ireland in 1926. The noble Lord said that it had been operating again since 1973. I understand why he has these reservations, but I cannot accept them as a generality. I know that the Northern Ireland experience has not been what it might be, but it has been quite a success in the Republic. Indeed, to my knowledge, two Protestant presidents have been elected by this system in the Republic. That is quite interesting.
	The European Union proportional systems are different but are none the less popular and operate well, as we know from the experience in Germany.
	The noble Lords, Lord Anderson and Lord Trimble, mentioned that those in the first half of the alphabet seem to do rather better. In the Lobbies of the House of Commons you will find exactly the same thing regarding the first and second halves of the alphabet. In Wales, of course, there are many people called Williams, Jones and Roberts—I wonder how that would affect distribution.
	Issues of localism and the situation in relation to a constituency are important. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, for pointing out the imperfections of the present system. I agree that the Labour Party was chivalrous in giving us the system that we have, but there is nothing wrong in trying to improve it.
	We will undoubtedly return to this question. It has been a feature of some speeches; even the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Conwy, indicated that we might return to this, and the Minister indicated something similar. Without more ado, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	Clause 2 [Assembly constituencies and electoral regions]:
	[Amendment No. 2 not moved.]
	Clause 6 [Voting at general elections]:
	[Amendments Nos. 3 and 4 not moved.]
	Clause 7 [Candidates at general elections]:

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: moved Amendment No. 5:
	Page 4, line 36, at end insert—
	"( ) The regional returning officer shall publish the list of candidates submitted by each political party for each electoral region."

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, having discussed the STV and AMS systems, hopefully we can move forward with this simple amendment that we think is fundamental, whatever system of lists is put in, with whatever proportionality. It is very important that open lists are brought in for the Assembly.
	This amendment takes away the choice of the order of listing by numbers of preference by political parties. It gives the electors a great deal more power over who they choose to represent them. In fact that power is placed in the hands of the electors because they are not guided in who they will actually vote for on a list. Indeed, we believe one of the downsides of the AMS system is that the lists are chosen for the electors in the order by which they would be elected.
	The huge advantage of open lists is that a greater variety of types of candidate can be selected by the electors: women, young candidates, the retired, employed or unemployed candidates, Welsh speakers or non-Welsh speakers, housewives, professionals or members of unions. People may be in all sorts of situations. It may be felt appropriate in certain constituencies for a woman to be elected, but one would know the characteristics of the individual candidate and whether they were worthy of election. The open-list system would create more interest in the election process and far more enthusiasm to vote because of the far greater variety of candidates involved.

Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, tempting though it is to embrace the principle of the open list, as my party has done in the past, there would be practical difficulties in the Assembly context. We have set up an elaborate system in the electoral regions for choosing candidates and their ranking on the list, which subsequent experience has proved to be right. I wonder if the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, realises that in the 2003 Assembly election the longest regional ballot paper was in South Wales Central, with 12 parties standing and 62 candidates' names on the ballot paper. It is not surprising that some people found that very confusing.
	The second vote is acknowledged to be a party vote, and it makes sense that parties should choose who is to represent them and present their choice to the electorate. There is no significant demand, as far as we can see, for a less ordered and more extensive choice of candidates, which, as I say, the electorate have in the past, and may in future, find confusing.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, the surprising thing about this amendment is that it would amend a Bill, when such provisions are usually dealt with in secondary legislation. The existing secondary legislation that governs the National Assembly makes provision for exactly what this amendment would achieve in the Bill. In fact, the secondary legislation goes further; it imposes an equivalent duty in respect of constituency candidates, which the noble Lord has not mentioned.
	In Scottish and European elections, lists are published in subordinate legislation, so why should primary legislation be burdened by this degree of detail when we have never found it necessary with regard to any other assembly or voting system that the British—in fact, the Welsh—people are involved in? We have subordinate legislation that makes provision for lists of candidates and regions. The amendment is not necessary; it is not in the appropriate place. The noble Lord has taken this opportunity to extol the virtues of lists, but what he suggests is already provided for elsewhere. If he wants to effect any change, it should be effected through secondary legislation.

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, I note what the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Conwy, and the Minister said. However, we are very familiar with the fact that the Assembly's system of election was decided by primary legislation; indeed, we are going to alter it by primary legislation here in both Houses of Parliament. So I cannot accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Conwy, that the second vote is a party vote and therefore it is satisfactory for the party hierarchy to decide who will be elected. I can see no reason at all why an open list is not much preferable as far as political parties are concerned. Perhaps the political parties are worried that people within their own parties might rock the boat or they might be more focused and get down to some rather hard decisions when they are elected. Lo and behold, perhaps the electorate might rather like that.
	The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, said that secondary legislation could achieve what the amendment sought. That may be the case. He asks why we should be burdened. Well, we have done it before. We did it in the original Wales Bill and we are going to do it in this Bill by suggesting another system. Therefore, I have no compunction whatever about dividing the House on this issue.

On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 5) shall be agreed to?
	Their Lordships divided: Contents, 63; Not-Contents, 135.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: moved Amendment No. 6:
	Page 5, line 19, at end insert—
	"(8) In the event of a candidate's death, the returning officer shall make arrangements for the election in that constituency or Assembly electoral region to be held not more than 28 days after the death of that candidate.
	(9) Subsection (8) does not apply if the original date of the election is more than 28 days after the date of the death of the candidate."

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, in the event of the death of a candidate at constituency level the whole regional list is suspended because you cannot total up the votes until you know which candidates have succeeded in each of the constituencies in that region. If the list is not complete in a region, the composition of the Assembly itself will not be known. We have to decide how we are going to fill that constituency vacancy. A candidate has died, therefore the election is postponed.
	This happened in England during the previous election, when there was a delay of some weeks before the vacancy, which I believe was in Staffordshire, was filled. We consulted electoral officers to determine how quickly such a vacancy could be filled. It was suggested that you really needed 35 days to nominate a new candidate, print the ballot papers and distribute them, especially to postal voters, before polling day. It was suggested that 35 days would be the ideal. Of course, 35 days is 35 days in limbo for the region and possibly for the Assembly, so we are trying to take one week off those 35 days and make it 28 days. I think possibly it would work, and from the death of a candidate to the election all the procedures could be filled in 28 days. That is the reason for the amendment and for the period that we have specified in the amendment. I beg to move.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, there was widespread concern at the last general election, when there was a delay to the return for one constituency because of the death of a candidate, so the noble Lord has identified an issue that needs attention. The amendment says 21 days, and we do not think we can achieve that administratively in such a tight timetable, but we do respect the point that a change to electoral arrangements in the UK is sought—

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, we have altered the amendment, and the Marshalled List reads "28 days" and not "21 days".

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I hear what the noble Lord says, and that helps to a degree. The real reason why I am going to ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment, despite the significance of the case that he has put forward, is that this issue is being addressed across the whole of the United Kingdom in the Electoral Administration Bill, which is in its final stages of consideration. Clause 24 of that Bill deals with the death of a candidate at a parliamentary election, and where the election has to be countermanded or abandoned it shortens the delay before a fresh election can be held. It also removes the need to countermand or abandon an election if the candidate who dies is an independent, which was part of the problem identified in the last general election.
	I assure the House that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Wales plans to make generally analogous changes in an order that will update the rules for conduct of Assembly elections to be made under Section 11 of the Government of Wales Act 1998. The order will be brought forward for approval in plenty of time for the next Assembly elections in May 2007. So the amendment is unnecessary. We are aware of the issue and that there is widespread concern about it. We intend to deal with it in terms of UK elections, and the Secretary of State for Wales will deal with it for the next election to the National Assembly for Wales, in 2007.

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his assurance. Having heard what he said, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	Clause 8 [Calculation of electoral region figures]:
	[Amendment No. 7 not moved.]
	Clause 9 [Allocation of seats to electoral region members]:
	[Amendment No. 8 not moved.]
	Clause 12 [Entitlement to vote]:

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: moved Amendment No. 9:
	Page 8, line 26, at end insert—
	"( ) For the purposes of subsection (1), section 2 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 (c. 2) (local government electors) shall have effect as if for subsection (1)(d) there were substituted—
	"(d) is of voting age (that is, 16 years or over).""

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, reducing the age at which people can vote from 18 to 16 has been debated in this House in recent weeks. So many things happen to a person when they are 16 years old. These are formative years; you can marry and take on family responsibilities. You can even become a boy soldier at 16 and fight in battle if necessary. It is unfair that someone is able to fight for his country and yet unable to vote for the Government of his country—or the Assembly, as in Wales.
	The reality is that people who do not vote not only take themselves out of the voting domain, but are in a way opting out of society itself. The sooner we can get them involved in society, with responsibilities within it, the sooner we might be able to interest them in a way which will last for the rest of their years.
	At 16, you change from the school to the workplace, or a place of further education. You become involved in the community. We want 16 year-olds to be involved in the community, not to feel excluded from it. Reducing the voting age to 16 would help to accomplish that wish, that they be part of society and responsible within it. I beg to move.

Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, is quite right that this issue has been much discussed in recent weeks, particularly in the context of the Electoral Administration Bill. It has also featured in our earlier discussion on the first day in Committee. My noble friend Lord Norton of Louth said that:
	"Any amendment to do with the voting age should be in national legislation, not specific to a particular part of the United Kingdom".—[Official Report, 19/04/06; col. 1109.]
	He made a number of other points which I shall not repeat, but he is right that if we change the voting age, it should be UK-wide.
	I have also noted the result of the wide-ranging survey conducted by the Electoral Commission and ICM and its result, namely that 64 per cent of the public thought 18 was the right voting age and only 18 per cent favoured a reduction to 16. Their results represented a solid affirmation of the status quo. Yes, of course we want to increase the interest shown by 16 to 18 year-olds in politics generally, but that should come in advance of consideration of lowering the voting age.

Lord Anderson of Swansea: My Lords, I recall the debates at the time of the reduction of the voting age from 21 to 18. There was a substantial consensus in favour of that reduction, following a report on the age of majority. I do not see such a consensus on a further lowering of the voting age today. I wonder where this will ultimately lead us. Will the progressive elements in our society continue to lower the age? Where does one go after lowering it to 16? I see no consensus for this and I certainly would not support such a proposal.

Lord Norton of Louth: My Lords, I reinforce the argument put forward by my noble friend on the Front Bench. There are three points to be deployed in respect of what has been said. First, as my noble friend said, this is the wrong Bill in which to incorporate such a provision. It should be a matter of public policy nationally and therefore should be the subject of national debate.
	Secondly, the amendment does not address the problem that the noble Lord mentioned. There is a question of how to involve young people in politics and there is a much wider discussion to be had about how to get people more engaged with political activity. But I do not think that this is the best route for that; it is a far more complex problem than this proposal suggests.
	The third problem with the amendment at this stage is that we have heard nothing new compared with what was raised in Committee. We responded to the arguments put forward then, and there is no value-added element in the amendment at this stage. The noble Lord says that 16 year-olds can marry and can become boy soldiers. But that is not the case in the sense that they do not choose to be boy soldiers. It is the Army that chooses them, if they apply, so there is a sifting process before they can exercise the benefits or positions that we permit them to have. On the other hand, voting is an absolute power that can be exercised directly. A significant qualitative distinction can be drawn between the two and therefore there is no clear argument for the proposal.
	The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, was right: when the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18, one argument for doing so was that it would get young people more engaged in political activity. However, that has not been the consequence, and I do not see why it necessarily follows that further lowering the voting age to 16 would have the desired effect. Therefore, like my noble friend, I see no virtue in the amendment at this stage.

The Earl of Mar and Kellie: My Lords, if the age were reduced to 16, it would mean that, depending on when they were born, some people would still not cast a vote until they were 18, given that in Wales there must be elections at least every two years.

Lord Dearing: My Lords, I follow the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Norton. Fifty years ago, I wrote my first letter to a newspaper to argue the case for voting at 18. I used much the same kind of argument as has been used by the noble Lord in support of the amendment. But there is a difference. In those days, military service was mandatory rather than a choice. Whether you liked it or not, you did your two years' military service. Furthermore, there is rather more maturity of judgment at 18 then there is at 16. Therefore, I think that this is a national matter which should not be rushed.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, I can only repeat the Government's position, which we made absolutely clear in Committee. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, that this Bill is not an appropriate vehicle for reducing the voting age in any British election. While the Government welcome the recommendations of the Power inquiry and its contribution to the debate on democracy in Britain, and while careful consideration will be given to the report and findings, as I said, this is not the vehicle for those concerns. We cannot simply slot in a provision lowering the voting age just for Wales, as my noble friend Lady Gale rightly said when we last debated this amendment. As a number of noble Lords have said, this issue must be debated on a UK-wide basis. I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, said, is almost precisely the same one as we considered and discussed fully in Committee.

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response and noble Lords for expressing their views in this short debate. I believe that there is still a strong argument for lowering the voting age from 18 to 16, not least because my noble friend Lord Mar and Kellie said that people would not necessarily vote in the year in which they turned 16. By the time they come to cast a vote they could be 17 or 18 years old. One of my friends on the Front Bench has said that he was 24 years old before he was able to exercise his right to vote. Time elapses between registering to vote and an election taking place.
	I am interested to know that there is, at least, a willingness to discuss this further from all sections of the House and to look at it in a UK-wide context. The nations of Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales will all be able to partake in a discussion and move forward at the same time. I would very much like to know that there will be such a debate. With that hope in mind, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendment No. 10 not moved.]
	Clause 27 [Assembly Commission]:

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: moved Amendment No. 11:
	Page 17, line 27, at end insert "not belonging to the same political group"

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, under this amendment we consider the Assembly commission. It is important to recognise why we have tabled this very simple amendment. Clause 27 on page 17 sets out what the Assembly commission is all about. It says that there will be an Assembly commission and that,
	"The members of the Assembly Commission are to be— (a) the Presiding Officer, and (b) four other Assembly members".
	Standing orders also come into play. The Assembly commission has many responsibilities. It is very important that it is independent of the Assembly Government as it will deal with, for example, the payment of civil servants. Schedule 2 refers to many responsibilities of the Assembly commission.
	In Scotland it was felt that there should be all-party participation in such a body. When one examines the responsibilities of the commission, it becomes quite clear that it is desirable to have overall representation on it; so when we say,
	"not belonging to the same political group",
	the four other members to whom we refer would be in that category and would be from different political parties. Amendment No. 12 is tabled by the Opposition and is very similar to this amendment. I beg to move.

Lord Henley: My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, has made clear, we have tabled a similar amendment, Amendment No. 12. I do not see much difference between the two amendments. If the noble Lord wishes to press his amendment—his amendment comes before ours as it refers to line 27 whereas ours refers to line 29—and if he were successful in having that put on the face of the Bill, we would not move our amendment. Both amendments are directed at the same purpose, which is ensuring that the Assembly commission should remain fairly non-party political.
	As the noble Lord made perfectly clear, the Assembly commission's duties, which are set out in the Bill and in the Explanatory Notes, are essentially non-political; they are practical duties relating to the running of the commission. Therefore, we think it is right that as far as possible as many different parties should be represented on it. For that reason, it might be that our amendment is marginally better because it states:
	"so far as is practicable".
	But it is only marginally better, and we are prepared to support the amendment standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, if he wishes to press it to a vote at the appropriate moment.

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: My Lords, I put my name to Amendment No. 12, but the decision about which to support was difficult and I made my choice on the basis of the wording. As a Cross-Bencher, I had to make my mind up. The principle behind these amendments is incredibly important. If we are to have a commission that has a degree of neutrality, it is essential that there is the broadest representation. I hope that it will embrace all the parties. I was not convinced that the Bill would do that without this amendment.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, as we have heard, Amendments Nos. 11 and 12 insert a requirement that the standing orders of the Assembly specify that the members of the commission, other than the Presiding Officer, should not belong to the same political group.
	As we have previously argued, the Government simply do not see it as necessary to place this requirement on the face of the Bill. Indeed, I understand that the Assembly has already established a shadow Assembly commission to begin to plan the work it will be required to do after next May's elections, and I hope that noble Lords will be greatly reassured to know that it has one member from each of the four political groups represented in the Assembly.
	There is also no equivalent requirement in place for the Scottish parliamentary corporate body, the House of Commons Commission or, indeed, for the Northern Ireland Assembly Commission. As the Assembly appears to be mature enough to have reached this conclusion of its own accord, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have spoken. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for his support. As he said, there is very little difference between my amendment and his. We believe that it is necessary to do this. I understand what the Minister said, and there is no doubt that at the moment the situation is very equable and people are getting on and ensuring that there is a Member from each party. I think it is—na-ve is probably the wrong word to use, but who knows what will happen in future as far as the commission is concerned? I think it is appropriate to divide the House on this and put into place what is a fact already. It is right and proper to have Members of different political parties on the commission by right. Therefore, I wish to test the opinion of the House.

On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 11) shall be agreed to?
	Their Lordships divided: Contents, 194; Not-Contents, 133.

Resolved in the affirmative, and amendment agreed to accordingly.
	[Amendment No. 12 not moved.]
	Clause 29 [Composition of committees]:

Lord Henley: moved Amendment No. 13:
	Page 18, line 24, leave out subsections (2) to (9) and insert—
	"( ) The standing orders shall include provision for ensuring that in apportioning members to committees and sub-committees regard is had to the balance of political parties represented in the Assembly."

Lord Henley: My Lords, Amendment No. 13 relates to Clause 29, which deals with the composition of any committees set up by the National Assembly for Wales. We debated this issue at considerable length in Committee and I do not intend to repeat all the arguments put forward at that stage. I can briefly sum up our objections—I imagine the same will be true of the Liberal Democrats' objections, but we will hear from the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, in due course. They are, first, that Clause 29 is overly prescriptive and, secondly—and I think more importantly—that it is a fix to give the largest party, which happens to be the Government party, the Labour Party, an unfair share of the membership of the committees that are set up.
	In Committee we put forward all the arguments about what I described as the, "overly prescriptive" nature of Clause 29, which brings in the d'Hondt mechanism for counting committees, giving an undue proportion of members to the ruling party, the Labour Party. I set out the figures showing how the relatively small-sized committees—and they have to be relatively small, bearing in mind the size of the Assembly—meant that d'Hondt provided an even more unfair system than anything else. We feel that this is overly prescriptive and that possibly the best way to deal with the matter is to leave out Clause 29 and leave it to the Assembly to decide on the composition of its committees.
	However, if we are going to have a Clause 29, we feel that it should be a much simpler version of affairs. The best way of dealing with that is to leave in subsection (1), remove subsections (2) to (9)—virtually the whole of the clause—and replace them with the words in Amendment No. 13:
	"The standing orders shall include provision for ensuring that in apportioning members to committees and sub-committees regard is had to the balance of political parties represented in the Assembly".
	It is as simple as that, and we can leave it to the Assembly to decide what it does.
	In Committee—it is right that I should say something about this—the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, spoke for the Government and defended Clause 29 and the d'Hondt principle. He said:
	"So the d'Hondt principle is simply a formula that gets as close as possible to the appropriate levels of fairness".
	I do not accept that. I think that the Members themselves can get a much better level of fairness than D'Hondt gives us, as we know from all the figures that d'Hondt will provide with the relatively small size of committees.
	The Minister went on to say that Clause 29 was, in effect, merely a voluntary clause and did not bind the Assembly. He said:
	"The formula is there against the eventuality of deadlock. I do not see why this is an intrusion on the Assembly".
	Further, he said:
	"I emphasise that it is not dictation. It does not dictate to the Assembly. If the Assembly can reach agreement on its committees, the d'Hondt formula . . . does not come into play".—[Official Report, 19/4/06; col. 1135-37.]
	All the noble Lord can suggest in favour of the argument that the clause is voluntary is subsection (8), which says that the Assembly may disapply subsections (2) to (7) but only if it has a two-thirds majority for so doing. In other words, there is a very comfortable blocking minority for the Labour Party preventing that applying and allowing it to go on using d'Hondt, which gives it an unfair advantage.
	As I said, I found extraordinary the Minister's defence in Committee and his claims that the clause was in effect voluntary. I invited him in my closing remarks to be good enough to look carefully at everything that he had said, which no doubt he has done, especially about the voluntary nature of the provision, and have a word with officials to see whether they could draft amendments to bring the clause into line with what he said.
	No doubt the Minister has done that and will tell us about those discussions, but I regret that he has not come forward with any amendments intended to do what we and the Liberal Democrats seek to do. Therefore, I have brought my amendments back and I certainly intend to press them in this case unless the Government can give a very clear response to our real concerns about the membership and composition of the committees. I beg to move.

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, we, too, have tabled an amendment about the committee system and are critical of the d'Hondt method of allocation. Our amendment is somewhat longer than the Conservative amendment, but it amounts to a similar conclusion. It states:
	"The members of any committee established by the Assembly under section 28(1)—
	(a) shall be elected by the Assembly from among the Assembly members, and
	(b) shall, unless that committee exists solely to provide advice, be elected so as to secure that, as far as is practicable, the balance of the parties in the Assembly is reflected in the membership of the committee".
	I say again that the Presiding Officer of the Assembly, the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, is unable to be with us this evening. This is the one amendment to which he would have spoken and supported. I want the House to know that that is the case.
	Provision for fair representation on the Assembly by removing the d'Hondt process is necessary. Essentially, d'Hondt is a very crude form of proportionality. The greater the number of parties, the greater the likelihood of distortion. The d'Hondt, or highest average, method of course originated in Belgium. Unlike the single transferable vote, it does not use a quota or formula to allocate seats or posts. Instead they are allocated singly, one after another. The basic idea is that a party's vote total is divided by a certain figure, which increases as it wins more seats. That underlines what the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said. It favours the largest party considerably. As the divisor becomes bigger, the party's total in succeeding rounds gets smaller, allowing parties with lower initial totals to win seats.
	We strongly believe that it is necessary to remove the d'Hondt process to achieve balance within the Assembly committees. As I said in Committee, it is significant that the Scottish Parliament has abandoned that system of allocation to committees on the basis that it was unfair and has come to an agreement whereby there is a fair allocation from all parties on the committees of the Scottish Parliament. There is a majority view that the d'Hondt method is not the best. We want to remove it and we will support the Conservative amendment.

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: My Lords, I added my name to the amendment having spoken to many people in the Assembly. In Committee, the Minister insisted that Clause 29 was to be only a fall-back position, but that cannot be reconciled with the Bill as currently worded. Clause 29 provides for all Assembly committees to be established using the d'Hondt formula, unless the Assembly resolves by a two-thirds majority to disapply that requirement. That does not seem to tally with the notion of a fall-back position. It would mean that every time that the Assembly wanted to establish a committee or sub-committee, a Motion would need to be tabled to disapply the requirements of the Act and Standing Orders if an alternative structure was required. That seems overly burdensome. Determining the size and structures of Assembly committees should definitely be within the preserve of the Assembly. The Bill takes an overly restrictive approach, quite apart from the results that will accrue, which have already been discussed in Committee.
	I emphasise that I have been hearing about considerable opposition to the measure, both in this House and in the Assembly. It is a pity that the Government have been unable successfully to make the case for that change. Nor have they been able to refine the Bill through a government amendment to address the concerns that I initially raised at Second Reading and were subsequently raised in Committee.

Lord Elystan-Morgan: My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with the amendments. In this context, the House should aim to avoid, on the one hand, rigidity and, on the other hand, a situation where it seems that the Welsh Assembly is not trusted to run its own House properly and in order.
	As for rigidity, there is no doubt that the d'Hondt system could lead to distortions. That would do no credit to the Welsh Assembly. It is an immensely complicated system. I have never yet met anyone who is totally confident that he or she understands it. It was said of the Schleswig-Holstein dilemma in the mid-19th century that only three persons ever understood it. One of them had died, one had gone mad and the third had forgotten everything about it. It may or may not be that three persons ever understood the d'Hondt system, but it is flawed and not worthy of the Assembly. The Assembly can properly exercise its proper discretion in that connection.
	I said a short while ago with regard to the Presiding Officer, my noble friend Lord Elis-Thomas, that he was a fascinating politician, but that I did not always accept his views as infallible. In this matter, I wholeheartedly agree with him, and he is in a very good position to judge exactly how it should be handled. I very much hope that the Government will be sympathetic to the views of those in favour of the amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, was not correct in Committee. It is not a case of being able to contract in to a system; there is a loophole to contract out of it, which is a very different matter.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, mentioned that the Scottish Parliament has moved to a simpler system of arriving at committee structure by agreement. When considering this matter, the House must bear in mind that a lot of people will watch committees of the Assembly when they legislate for primary legislation. They will be interested in the issue, as happens in Scotland. If the public see votes going on in a complicated system about how a committee should be made up, with wrangling and argument, they will not like it. I suggest that it is very much in the interests of the Assembly to have a much simpler system in which Members agree among themselves, so that there will be no wrangling in public.
	We in this House should consider the point of view of the electorate much more than we have so far today. Listening to the discussion about voting systems, I was horrified that it is all about what elected Members feel about how it all works and what is the theory, and nothing about what it looks like to the electorate. That is a very important point, so I support my noble friend's amendment.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, let me begin by stating that we are on common ground. We want the committees of the Assembly to be established according to fair principles. Let me disabuse the House of any false notion about this formula. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, that Schleswig-Holstein was a dispute about which territories belonged to which kingdom. It is a pity that it has a foreign name, but d'Hondt is merely a dispassionate formula that is widely used to deal with a problem. It is ridiculous to suggest that other parliamentarians in other Assemblies have used it when they know that it is corrupt, biased and flawed and that it discriminates against smaller representations. That is not so. They use it because there is a problem that needs to be overcome.
	Why does the British Parliament not use the formula? It does not use it because, on the whole, the majority party in elections to the British Parliament is pretty clearly defined. That is why we have a defined government as a result of British general elections. It is also the reason why some of us in earlier debates had reservations about STV and the problems that it throws up. It is clear how one sets up committees in the British Parliament, and the formula used in another place, which is also used here, is based on agreed principles relating to the size of the parties in Parliament.
	The problem with Wales is straightforward; there will not necessarily be a majority. In fact, it is quite often likely that there will be no majority. There is a balance and a range of positions in Wales, which are reflected in an electoral system that is guaranteed to be fully representative, thereby producing nothing quite so dramatically clear. There is therefore no easy numerical formula to apply to the question of how one arrives at the composition of committees in quite the same way in which it is applied in the other place in the UK Parliament.
	The presumption must be that men and women of good will will try to set up committees that are reasonably and properly representative. Nothing in Clause 29 prevents that process. Our fellow citizens in Wales who are elected to the National Assembly must have the same presumption of reasonableness that our elected representatives have in the other place. They will have no more difficulty, much of the time, in achieving a fair distribution in their committees by agreement. If they do have such a difficulty through the usual channels, nothing like d'Hondt ever comes into play. They carry out the normal political process of reaching agreement. However, they might not reach such agreement and bargains might not be struck through that formula because there is not necessarily a large majority party in Wales.
	The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Henley, who upbraids me by suggesting that I have not solved this problem, leaves a huge problem itself. Under his amendment, what would happen if agreement could not be reached? There is no fallback in his amendment. It presumes that the composition of committees is arrived at through a process of good will. The Government are a little more farsighted than the noble Lord's amendment. We want, hope and expect committees to be set up in sweet reasonableness on the basis of the relative size of the parties in the House, but if they are not, and if agreement cannot be reached, the question is: who decides? How is the problem solved? This problem is almost as knotty as Schleswig-Holstein. The amendments of the noble Lords, Lord Henley and Lord Livsey, ignore that. They take out the d'Hondt formula but put nothing else in its place, so we are left with stalemate if there is disagreement. The noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, indicated that endless wrangling about the composition of committees might be to the detriment of any Assembly. It is not an edifying sight, and not something that Assemblies want to spend a great deal of time on, although they sometimes do. They certainly do not want a great deal of public interest in the problem.
	All the d'Hondt formula does is to indicate how the composition of committees is to be arrived at if there is no agreement. That is why it is a fallback. I said that in Committee, and I reiterate the point today. That is exactly what it is. Nothing prevents the Assembly setting up its committees under any formula or proposition it likes, provided of course that it has total, or at least two-thirds, agreement on the position. If agreement is reached, even if it is not total, there is no problem. If there is severe disagreement and the problem cannot be resolved, d'Hondt says, "Here is a fallback formula that will define how the committees will be established in those circumstances".
	It is suggested that the d'Hondt formula is biased against smaller representations in the Assembly, but that is why Clause 29, which the Opposition seek to amend, ensures that every Assembly Member—including independent Members, those belonging to smaller parties, and even those who belong to a party of one in which they are the sole representative—could be entitled to a place on the committee, subject to there being enough committee places to make that possible. There is respect for the minorities.
	The d'Hondt formula is, of course, also easier to operate among larger numbers, because how can you operate any formula of proportionality in a committee of one? You cannot create a fraction of one, so of course committees must be of a certain size before the formula works entirely fairly. Indeed, the formula produces exactly the same representation in a committee of 10 as it does in current Assembly committees with 10 members, so the formula and the agreed process that has produced a committee of 10 in the Assembly both produce exactly the same representation as the Assembly in its wisdom has arrived at. If the Assembly in its wisdom arrives at that without any application of any formula, it is entirely free to do so. Nothing in Clause 29 prohibits that.
	Clause 29 addresses the Schleswig-Holstein question. When the going gets difficult and agreement cannot be reached, there are only two solutions: stalemate, which the noble Lords, Lord Henley and Lord Livsey, blithely say they do not mind, despite the warnings of the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, that stalemate in the Assembly and endless problems over committees might do the Assembly's reputation no good at all; or a formula. That is the defence of d'Hondt and of Clause 29. I hope that noble Lords opposite will recognise that this is a proper and democratic defence in a clause that allows the Assembly to take its decisions but resolves disagreement where it occurs. It behoves noble Lords who propose amendments to say what they would do about disagreement. Their amendments do not refer to that at all.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, and with the leave of the House, he suggested that what I was saying would produce chaos. There is no reason whatever why the standing orders which the Assembly would agree should not make provision for what happens when there are problems—probably a simple vote of the Assembly. The amendment leaves this to the Assembly. It does not prescribe it in the Bill. The noble Lord is wrong to say that the alternative is chaos.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I did not say that what the noble Baroness had expressed was chaos. She had indicated the costs of chaos. It does not do an Assembly a great deal of good to have endless wrangling over its committees. I am merely indicating that, because the nature of the composition of any foreseeable National Assembly for Wales will provide a balance between parties, there has to be a formula for a resolution which we would all recognise. Otherwise there could be a tricky, not to say impossible, problem to resolve. That is the difficulty with the amendment, which is why the noble Lord should withdraw it.

Lord Henley: My Lords, I have to say to the noble Lord that that was a nice try, but it simply will not wash. The essential argument put forward by the noble Lord is that Clause 29 is voluntary by its nature; that is, people will get round in a friendly way to decide on the committees and, if that breaks down, they would then have to use d'Hondt. The noble Lord obviously is not reading the clause that I am looking at. Clause 29(1) states:
	"The provision included in the standing orders in compliance with section 28 . . . must meet the requirements of this section".
	Subsection (2) states:
	"The provision must secure",
	and I could go on.
	However, the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, put it in much simpler terms, which I shall repeat. This clause is essentially about contracting out by the rather difficult subsection (8) whereas the noble Lord is implying that it is about contracting into d'Hondt if there are problems. That is not the case. We believe that ours is a better approach. If there are any problems, it essentially leaves these matters to the Assembly to decide in its standing orders. For that reason, I should like to test the opinion of the House.

On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 13) shall be agreed to?
	Their Lordships divided: Contents, 181; Not-Contents, 131.

Resolved in the affirmative, and amendment agreed to accordingly.
	[Amendment No. 14 not moved.]
	Clause 30 [Audit Committee]:

Baroness Noakes: moved Amendment No. 15:
	Page 19, line 34, leave out "Audit Committee or Pwyllgor Archwilio" and insert "Accounts Committee (or Pwyllgor Cyfrifon) or any other name that the Assembly chooses to allow through its standing orders"

Baroness Noakes: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 15 I shall speak also to the other five amendments in the group. The Minister will see that in addition to my noble friend Lord Roberts of Conwy, the noble Lords, Lord Livsey of Talgarth and Lord Roberts of Llandudno, have added their names to the amendment. I am grateful to them for their support.
	Put simply, the amendments are designed to save the new arrangements for government in Wales from an unwieldy bit of language. Clause 30 states that there has to be a committee known as the "Audit Committee", and Clause 142 sets out what it must do in terms of considering accounts and the Auditor General's reports, and laying reports on them before the Assembly. As we debated in Committee, the functions set out in Clause 142 are virtually the same as those which apply to the Public Accounts Committee in another place. The term "Audit Committee" is used widely in both the public and private sectors with a slightly different meaning in each. In the public sector, the Treasury talks of the audit committee in terms of supporting the accounting officer in matters of risk, control and governance, while in the private sector the audit committee has a role acting on behalf of the board to oversee and review financial statements and financial controls. None of this usage is like Clause 142, which makes Clause 30, at the very least, confusing.
	All these points were made by the Auditor General for Wales to the Assembly committee which considered the Bill, and the committee concurred with the Auditor General. That is why Amendment No. 15 would take out the name "Audit Committee". It is simply the wrong name. The amendment does this by replacing it with "Accounts Committee" which is similar to "Public Accounts Committee". However, the amendment goes further and provides that the name may be changed through the Assembly's standing orders. It is surely wrong in principle to hardwire any title of a committee into an Act. This amendment allows for future change if the Assembly thinks fit.
	It is true that the current arrangements in Wales feature an audit committee, but that is not an argument to enshrine it for all time in this Bill. It is also true that the Scottish Parliament uses the title, but I understand that this is achieved entirely through its standing orders and there is no compulsion as to name or even the nature of the committee in the Scotland Act. This amendment is plain common sense. I beg to move.

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, as the noble Baroness has said, the situation is analogous to a public accounts committee rather than an audit committee. I am aware that there may be problems from the point of view of the Assembly which the Minister may refer to, but he will have to seek to justify the comments of the Assembly auditor, who has some doubts about the wisdom of the committee being called by this name. We shall listen carefully to what the Minister has to say. We believe that the general direction of the amendment is correct in accounting terms and is easy to understand because we all know what a public accounts committee is. It is a body independent of the executive which can examine issues in the accounts and verify them in a searching way. At the moment, we support the amendment.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, as I outlined in Committee, we firmly believe that this is a matter for the Assembly. Indeed, I am slightly mystified by the remark of the noble Lord, Lord Livsey. If I heard it correctly, he implied that the Assembly auditor wants this change. I can tell him that in its consideration of the Bill, the Assembly has expressed a view that a name similar to that of the Public Accounts Committee should be avoided and that it is happy with the name of the committee as set out. The Government believe that the Assembly should be able to initiate a change of name for a committee if it chooses to do so. Under Part 3 there is a clear mechanism by which the Assembly may achieve this. It may apply for an Order in Council to confer legislative competence on the Assembly to reform the name and functions of the Audit Committee by Assembly measure, but I wish to stress the point to the Liberal Democrats that this is the name the Assembly wants for the committee; it does not want a change.
	Furthermore, as I attempted to explain in Committee, Amendment No. 15 inserts a provision that the Assembly may give the Audit Committee,
	"any other name . . . through its standing orders".
	That is simply not practical. Standing orders could not authorise the Assembly to change references to the Audit Committee in other legislation such as the Care Standards Act 2000. This would cause legal inconsistency and confusion, none of which would be in the public interest. As I acknowledged in Committee, it is very important for the Audit Committee's role to be made clear; that is, to scrutinise the use of financial resources by Welsh Ministers and the other persons and bodies funded out of the Welsh Consolidated Fund, and to hold those persons and bodies to account. The people of Wales have not had any difficulty in understanding that this is the role of the current Audit Committee. Given that we are talking about an Assembly and about something that it wants, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

Baroness Noakes: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, for his support. If the Assembly wants to have a name other than the one it is given in the Act, it ought to be able to achieve that by a mechanism a lot less cumbersome than applying for an Order in Council. I am sure the Minister will be aware that the chances of getting that pushed through are pretty remote. If the Minister had said that he was prepared to produce an amendment to Schedule 5 to the Bill to allow a measure-making power, that might have been an acceptable response. But he does not want to do that. The Minister wants to impose the name "Audit Committee" for a good length of time on the Welsh governance arrangements.
	I do not believe that the issue of cross-reference to other legislation is insuperable. Amendments could be used to deal with existing legislation and future legislation needs only to refer to the committee required by Clause 30. These are not substantive reasons for not pursuing this matter. I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.

On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 15) shall be agreed to?
	Their Lordships divided: Contents, 155; Not-Contents, 127.

Resolved in the affirmative, and amendment agreed to accordingly.

Baroness Noakes: moved Amendments Nos. 16 to 18:
	Page 19, line 36, leave out "Audit" and insert "Accounts" .
	Page 19, line 38, leave out "Audit" and insert "Accounts"
	Page 19, line 45, leave out "Audit" and insert "Accounts"
	On Question, amendments agreed to.
	Clause 31 [Standing orders]:

Baroness Noakes: moved Amendment No. 19:
	Page 20, line 4, at end insert—
	"(1A) The standing orders must include provision for the scrutiny and approval of the budgets of—
	(a) the Assembly Commission,
	(b) the Auditor General,
	(c) the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales,
	(d) the Children's Commissioner for Wales,
	(e) the Commissioner for Older People in Wales,
	and may include provision for the scrutiny and approval of the budgets of any other specified body or person which is funded from the Welsh Consolidated Fund."

Baroness Noakes: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 19, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 74. With these amendments, I am returning to issues we debated in Committee about the extent to which certain budgets can be protected against the Executive.
	Amendment No. 19 would add a new subsection (1A) to Clause 31, which says that the standing orders which are the subject of Clause 31 have to include provision for the scrutiny and approval of the budgets of five named persons or bodies: the Assembly Commission, the Auditor General, the Public Services Ombudsman, the Children's Commissioner and the Commissioner for Older People in Wales. It also says that other bodies can be added to this list.
	I do not think that Amendment No. 19 itself is very controversial; it merely specifies some matters that will, for the most part, be covered by the standing orders to be drawn up under Clause 31. We know that the audit committee will deal with the Auditor General's estimates, as set out in paragraph 12 of Schedule 8. The Minister told us in Committee that standing orders would have to deal with estimates for the Assembly Commission and for the Public Services Ombudsman; that is dealt with in paragraph 85(12) of Schedule 10.
	The addition of the two commissioners—for children and older people—raises slightly different issues. The Care Standards Act 2000 requires the Children's Commissioner's estimates to be considered by the executive committee and laid before the Assembly. Paragraph 28 of Schedule 11 to the Bill currently passes this function to Ministers, thus diminishing the role of the Assembly.
	The Commissioner for Older People in Wales is covered by a Bill which is before another place, but that has the financial estimates being put before the Assembly Cabinet. My amendment is to this extent designed to ensure that there are proper scrutiny provisions so that Assembly Members can oversee the funding of the commissioners.
	I am aware from our debate in Committee that the Government want to pursue a non-departmental public body model for the two commissioners, which gives Parliament only a very indirect say in the funding that goes to such bodies. That model works very well all the time that the Government give the bodies enough money to allow them to pursue their functions properly. But when the Government impose a financial squeeze—which often happens, whether for good reasons or bad—Parliament, in the case of the UK, or the Assembly in Wales, would be left without an effective voice. I believe that the Government's preferred solution is in contrast to the position for the equivalent commissioner for children in Scotland, where I understand that funding is determined by the Scottish Parliament, not Ministers.
	The meat of Amendment No. 19 is found in Amendment No. 74, which amends Clause 124, the clause that provides that annual budget motions have to be presented by a Welsh Minister. At present, the Bill would allow that budget motion to include amounts which were not enough to allow the various persons listed in Amendment No. 19 to do their work effectively. My Amendment No. 74 would in effect protect those budgets once they had been scrutinised and approved.
	In Committee, the Minister said that if Assembly Members do not like what Welsh Ministers put forward, they can reject the budget motion. But that is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut; it is not practical, everyday politics. However, there is a practical, everyday reason to ensure that important parts of the constitutional arrangements for Wales are properly funded. That is why my Amendment No. 74 says that the annual budget motion has to include the amounts approved under proposed subsection (1A) of Clause 31, as inserted by my Amendment No. 19.
	The Minister's response in Committee was surprising in the light of the Latimer House guidelines, which followed an initiative by Commonwealth heads of government in 1998. The guidelines state quite clearly:
	"An all-party committee of Members of Parliament should review and administer Parliament's budget which should not be subject to amendment by the executive".
	This clearly applies to the funding of the Assembly Commission and, I argue, must also apply to constitutional officers such as the Auditor General and the ombudsman. Will the Minister say why the Government have chosen to ignore the Latimer House guidelines in the Bill?
	We believe that there should be no room in the annual budget motion for the Executive to decide to put less money than in the budgets for bodies. The budget motion must fund them to the extent of approved budgets. That is a matter of principle. I beg to move.

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, we have a great deal of sympathy with the amendment. It is important that the budgets are properly approved under the guidelines. The bodies listed in the amendment are important and should not be underfunded. I am sure that that would not happen but it is important to ensure that the money goes where it should and that it is there, as agreed. It would be an extremely sensitive matter if proper provision were not made for the Children's Commissioner for Wales and the Commissioner for Older People in Wales.
	Scrutiny and approval of the budgets are important, particularly in relation to the Welsh Consolidated Fund. As we were saying on an earlier amendment, the Assembly Commission has a function in this respect, as provided for in Schedule 2.
	We support the amendment; it is the right and proper way to proceed in relation to these bodies.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, we appreciate the aim of the noble Baroness in tabling Amendments Nos. 19 and 74 to ensure that there is proper and informed democratic control by the Assembly of the budgets for the persons and bodies listed in the amendment. I reassure the noble Baroness, however, that these amendments are not necessary.
	On Amendment No. 19, adequate pre-budget scrutiny procedures for the Auditor General and the ombudsman are already provided for in the Bill. The Auditor General's estimate will go to the Assembly's Audit Committee, as it does now, by virtue of paragraph 12 of Schedule 8 to the Bill. The Audit Committee will receive that estimate at least five months before the beginning of each financial year. The committee must examine it and then lay it before the Assembly. It may modify the estimate before doing so, but only after prior consultation with the Auditor General.
	The estimate procedure for the Public Services Ombudsman is set out in paragraph 15 of Schedule 1 to the Public Services Ombudsman (Wales) Act 2005 as amended by paragraph 85(12) of Schedule 10 to this Bill. Under that procedure the ombudsman's estimate will go to one of the Assembly's committees, which the Bill requires to be specified in Standing Orders. The procedure is otherwise identical to that for the Auditor General's estimate. The committee will receive the estimate by 1 November prior to the relevant financial year. They must then examine it and lay it before the Assembly. Again, they can propose modifications, subject to prior consultation with the ombudsman. The Bill does not specify any particular procedure for scrutiny of the Assembly Commission's budget. However, it is open to the Assembly in formulating its new standing orders to provide for an estimate, or pre-budget procedure for the Assembly Commission, should it choose to do so. That is, rightly, a matter for the Assembly.
	Turning to the Children's and Older People's Commissioners, as discussed in Committee, the mechanism specified in the Bill is the same in principle as the mechanism already established for the Children's Commissioner. The splitting of the legislature from the executive will formalise and clarify the Assembly's role in scrutinising the Welsh Ministers. As part of that role, Assembly Members will have the power to scrutinise the Welsh Ministers' budget. They will be aided in scrutinising the part of it that relates to the Children's Commissioner by the provision of an estimate, as provided for in paragraph 6 of Schedule 2 to the Care Standards Act. Similarly, paragraph 9 of Schedule 1 to the Commissioner for Older People (Wales) Bill will provide for the Assembly to be aided in its scrutiny of the part of the Welsh Ministers' budget that relates to the commissioner by the provision of an estimate. If Assembly Members are not satisfied that the commissioner is receiving adequate funding, they will be able to hold the Welsh Ministers to account, thus ensuring that there is proper and effective political and democratic accountability.
	Amendment No. 74 would require Welsh Ministers to include in the annual budget motion those amounts which have been approved by the Assembly for the Assembly Commission, the Auditor General, the ombudsman, and the Children's and Older People's Commissioners during the pre-budget scrutiny process that would be imposed on standing orders by Amendment No. 19. It is a key responsibility of the Welsh Assembly Government to plan and put forward a budget to deliver the commitments it was elected on, and to maximise the benefits of utilising those resources on behalf of the taxpayer. Limiting the discretion of the elected Government to do that runs counter to our very system of government.
	With great respect, we think this amendment goes too far by allowing the estimates laid before the Assembly in respect of those persons and bodies to dictate the content of the annual budget motion. In the Government's view, the proper relationship is that the estimates are provided to aid the Assembly's scrutiny of the annual budget motion moved by the Welsh Ministers under Clause 124(1). It is a well established constitutional principle that it is for the executive to request resources and for the legislature to consider whether or not to authorise them.
	In moving an annual budget motion on behalf of themselves, the Assembly Commission, the Auditor General and the ombudsman, the Welsh Ministers are inviting the Assembly to allocate a finite amount of resources in the annual budget motion. If, having had the benefit of considering the estimates for the persons and bodies listed above, the Assembly is not satisfied with the amounts proposed in the annual budget motion, it can reject it. On that basis we believe the Bill already provides a proper and effective mechanism for informed, democratic control.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, asked about the Latimer House guidelines. The Government are aware that clause 6 of part 6 of the principles of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association provides that,
	"An all party committee of Members of Parliament should review and administer Parliament's budget which should not be subject to amendment by the Executive".
	The Assembly's Standing Order Committee has agreed the principle that, where appropriate, the committee should take account of those guidelines in drawing up its recommendations for the Assembly's new standing orders. The Government do not believe that the mechanism under the Bill would be in any way inconsistent with the Latimer House guidelines. Ultimately the budget for the Assembly Commission is voted on by the Assembly itself as a separate and distinct part of the annual budget motion. If the Assembly is not satisfied that the amount proposed in that motion is sufficient for the commission, the Welsh Ministers risk losing their budget motion. The Assembly has the right to keep rejecting the annual budget motion until it is satisfied that the amount allocated to the commission is sufficient.
	I hope, with the explanation I have given, that the noble Baroness will be able to withdraw the amendment.

Baroness Noakes: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that very detailed reply, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Livsey of Talgarth, for his support for my amendments. I will study carefully what the Minister has said and see the extent to which what he has said has clarified the issues, but my instinct is that the solution that he offers is still that the Assembly says it rejects the whole budget motion if there is an issue about the precise amount of resources being allocated to the bodies I am seeking to protect by these amendments. As I suggested earlier, that does not seem a practical solution to a real issue, and I am not convinced that it is consistent with the spirit of the Latimer House guidelines, which should prevent the Executive from trying to impose a lower-resourced requirement. I will think carefully about what he has said and take further advice before Third Reading. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: moved Amendment No. 20:
	Page 20, line 29, leave out "day on which the"

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, in speaking to Amendment No. 20 I shall also speak to the other government amendments grouped with it. These are all minor and technical amendments.
	Amendments Nos. 82 and 107 make provision necessary as a consequence of other legislation. Amendments Nos. 83 and 110 save provision made by Order in Council under Section 22 of the Government of Wales Act 1998. Amendments Nos. 84 to 101 make consequential amendments to the Public Services Ombudsman (Wales) Act 2005 that arise from the split between the legislature and the Executive. They include grammatical corrections consequent upon other amendments made by the Bill.
	Amendments Nos. 102 and 108 concern the designation of the Assembly Commission as a Crown body for VAT and other purposes. In practical terms, they will enable that designation to come into effect as soon as the commission assumes its functions. Amendments Nos. 111 to 114 provide for Assembly procedures to apply to the making by the Welsh Ministers of subordinate legislation.
	Amendment No. 115 is necessary to ensure that amendments to other legislation made both by and under the Bill—that is, made on the face of the Bill and by order after enactment—are covered by the transitional provisions in Schedule 11. Finally, Amendment No. 117 reflects amendments made elsewhere in the Bill. I beg to move.

Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for having given us a synopsis of these amendments, which are indeed numerous. I went through his written account of the implications of the amendments. Although I sometimes thought that certain matters were not so much technical as deserving to be pursued in greater depth, as soon as I began such a pursuit, I quickly realised that they could be described as technical after all, so I have no further comment to make on the amendments. I am also grateful to the Minister for selecting certain other government amendments, which we will come to later—they will receive special attention.

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, we on these Benches also accept these technical amendments. We are grateful to the team who scrutinised the Bill for dotting the "i"s and crossing the "t"s and we have no reason whatever to oppose the amendments.

On Question, amendment agreed to.
	Clause 32 [Participation by UK Ministers etc.]:

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: moved Amendment No. 21:
	Page 21, line 12, at end insert—
	"( ) This section ceases to have effect on the day on which the Assembly Act provisions come into force."

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, we discussed this amendment with the group Cymru Yfory—Tomorrow's Wales—which is concerned that the section,
	"ceases to have effect on the day on which the Assembly Act provisions come into force".
	The amendment foresees the granting of full legislative powers to the Assembly and would in that situation remove the right of the Secretary of State to sit in the National Assembly plenum and its committees when the Assembly gets full legislative powers. While continued attendance by the Secretary of State remains a necessary feature of the transitional phases of devolution, and we can all see the need for that, any need for this disappears when the Assembly acquires legislative powers of its own. There is of course no right for the Secretary of State or any outsider to sit in the Scottish Parliament. I would be happy to hear the Minister's comments on the ideas that have come from Tomorrow's Wales.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, when the Bill becomes an Act, it will increase the potential primary legislative powers of the Assembly, but what would be the point of an amendment that took away from the people of Wales a voice in the Cabinet? A great deal of legislation is not devolved to the Assembly, even if the whole of Part 4 is in operation. Many essential public issues which are debated in Cabinet and are subject to the decision of the United Kingdom legislature would have no specific Welsh contribution. I cannot see the gain to the people of Wales in that. We are all in favour of those proposals which emphasise the enhanced potential powers of the Assembly and the move to greater devolution, but I cannot see why on crucial issues—defence, economic, fiscal and monetary policy, immigration, civil and criminal law, none of which is a devolved matter—the Secretary of State for Wales should have no contribution in the Cabinet on behalf of the people of Wales. I cannot see how that would serve the interests of the people of Wales and I hope that the noble Lord will recognise that and withdraw his amendment.

Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, am I right in thinking that, even after Part 4 comes to fruition, the Secretary of State will still have a significant role in securing finance for the Assembly from central Government sources?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, that is an additional point—the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Conwy, is as perspicacious as ever. It adds weight to my argument. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, agrees that there is a role for the Secretary of State for Wales on behalf of the Welsh people.

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, I, too, see a role for the Secretary of State for Wales, particularly with regard to what the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, just said. It was a very cogent point. The negotiation of the block grant for the Assembly is extremely important. The amendment recognises that in the transitional phase of devolution, as the Assembly moves towards full legislative powers, we see a role for the Secretary of State, but the amendment is looking more at the process as a timetable of events. I am interested in what the Minister said and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn
	Clause 33 [Consultation about UK Government's legislative programme]:

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: moved Amendment No. 22:
	Page 21, line 17, leave out "Secretary of State" and insert "Assembly"

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, this amendment comes from the same source. The Bill allows the Secretary of State the discretion to decide whether to consult the Assembly about Bills in the UK Government's legislative programme. It seems inappropriate for the Secretary of State to decide whether the Assembly should be consulted; that should be a matter for the Assembly itself. We feel quite strongly about that. The amendment transfers the power to determine whether consultation with the Assembly is unnecessary from the Secretary of State to the Presiding Officer in this instance. The Assembly should be the locus of power in this respect. It would enhance the Assembly's role. I beg to move.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for the way in which he moved the amendment, but he will recognise that the provisions contained in Clause 33 are similar to those contained in Section 31 of the Government of Wales Act 1998, which are unique to the devolution settlement for Wales. The arrangements already in place ensure that the Assembly has an opportunity to express views on proposed legislation that affects its responsibilities.
	Under the devolution settlement established by the 1998 Act, it has been essential for the Assembly to be consulted on the UK Government's legislative programme, because primary legislation has in many instances conferred new executive functions on the Assembly. In addition, Bills in this current Session have included framework provisions, giving the Assembly wider and more permissive powers to determine the detail of how the provisions should be implemented in Wales—an example is the NHS Redress Bill, which has recently been scrutinised and passed by this House.
	Under this Bill, the consultation provision will continue to be important, as Parliament will still enact primary legislation that affects the Assembly's responsibilities. That is why the provision has been carried forward; to enable these successful contacts to continue.
	The existing arrangements have worked well to date, and there is no reason why they should not continue to do so.  The provision gives the Secretary of State some discretion, because there is a need for the Assembly to be able to express a view only on areas where it has some responsibility. Bills on matters for which the Assembly clearly has no responsibility, such as an Armed Forces Bill, can be excluded from the consultation. But omission from the Secretary of State's consultation does not prevent Assembly Members expressing views on other Bills included in the Queen's Speech during the Assembly debate on the legislative programme—in which, of course, the Secretary of State takes part. I think that that is a valued power for the Assembly.
	The provision concerns the legislative programme of the UK Government. The Bill rightly provides that it is for the UK Government to determine what consultation on their own programme should be undertaken. The Assembly or the Presiding Officer will not be in a position to determine what Bills are relevant to its responsibilities and, therefore, what consultation is appropriate. This could well result in the consultation becoming far less effective because, instead of concentrating on Bills that relate to the Assembly's responsibilities, the Assembly would in practice have to require consultation on pretty well everything.

Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, can the Minister confirm that only the Secretary of State would be in a position to know the UK Government's legislative programme and therefore impart some knowledge about it to the Assembly? The Assembly and the Presiding Officer would not be in a position to know the legislative programme of the UK Government.

Lord Davies of Oldham: No, my Lords, they certainly will not know it in sufficient detail to be able to determine what affects the Assembly's responsibilities and what does not. In fact, this is an important link. It is unique to this legislation. It has been very much approved of in the past, and used intelligently and well. We consider that it should continue in the Bill.

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, I have listened with interest to this debate and to what the Minister has said. We assume that, in this instance, we are referring specifically to the Secretary of State for Wales and his or her role in this situation. We will evaluate the Minister's response. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendments Nos. 23 and 24 not moved.]
	Clause 37 [Power to call]:

Lord Kingsland: moved Amendment No. 25:
	Page 23, line 28, at end insert—
	"( ) Subsection (3) does not apply to any matter under section 84(1)."

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, I apologise to the Minister for not tabling this amendment in Committee. The truth is that I had not thought about it at Committee stage. It is a problem that occurred to me only as a result of rereading the Bill, as is my habit, between Committee and Report.
	The amendment, as is clear from the Marshalled List, seeks to disapply subsection (3) of Clause 37 to any matter under Clause 84(1). Clause 84(1), headed "Construction of references to Ministers and departments", reads as follows, in so far as it is relevant to the amendment:
	"So far as may be necessary for the purpose or in consequence of the exercise of any functions of the Welsh Ministers, the First Minister or the Counsel General, any reference in any enactment or other document to—
	(a) a Minister of the Crown . . . is to be construed as being or including a reference to the Welsh Ministers".
	In other words, where a Welsh Minister is acting in the place of a Minister of the Crown, the expression "Minister of the Crown" is considered to apply to Welsh Ministers. In Clause 37, entitled "Power to call", which I seek to amend, subsection (1) states:
	"Subject as follows, the Assembly may require any person—
	(a) to attend Assembly proceedings for the purpose of giving evidence, or
	(b) to produce for the purposes of the Assembly (or a committee of the Assembly or a sub-committee of such a committee) documents in the possession, or under the control, of the person,
	concerning any matter relevant to the exercise by the Welsh Ministers of any of their functions".
	Perhaps I may move on and draw your Lordships attention to subsection (3), which reads:
	"The Assembly may not impose a requirement under subsection (1) on a person who—
	(a) is or has been a Minister of the Crown".
	I think your Lordships will readily see my concern. It appears that in so far as a Welsh Minister is acting in Wales on Welsh matters as a Minister of the Crown, rather than as a Welsh Minister, he or she cannot be compelled to appear in front of the Assembly, or any committee of the Assembly, and cannot be compelled to produce any documents that might be relevant to that appearance or for any other reason. If that is so, would I not be right in concluding that this is potentially a serious gap in the way in which the Welsh Assembly is capable of controlling the Executive? I beg to move.

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, this is a very interesting amendment. Sometimes it is a good idea to extrapolate certain circumstances from amendments and the consequences thereof. It is interesting to note that the first two First Ministers in the Assembly have been Ministers of the Crown in this place. Had they, under this legislation, been barred from addressing the Assembly on a number of matters of considerable content because they had previously been Ministers of the Crown, that would perhaps have created a very interesting situation. It is a probing amendment to determine whether the legislation is bringing about the desired result or whether it will hamstring the Assembly in getting information that is in the public interest and that of the people of Wales. This is particularly relevant to committee proceedings, for example, about important matters that may have great consequences for the public interest. I will be very interested in the Minister's response to the amendment.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, may refer to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, as probing, but by heaven it terrifies me, if I follow the dire implications that the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, has read into this conjunction between Clauses 37 and 84. I hope to disabuse him of any justification for his fears. I would first like to explain our intent in how the Bill is constructed. Secondly, I hope to prove that that intent is fulfilled in the clauses. We had some anxiety about this amendment, as I was not quite clear on the nature of the worries of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland. I now understand them. Whether I have understood them sufficiently to assuage them is a different matter altogether, but I will do my best.
	The simple fact is that the Assembly will be able to summon the First Minister, the Welsh Ministers, deputy Welsh Ministers and the Counsel General. They are all subject to Clause 37. Ministers of the UK Government and their civil servants, or former UK Government Ministers, or civil servants working for the UK Government, cannot be summoned to be questioned about the exercise of their functions because that is properly the role of this Parliament. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, agrees with me there. If the intent behind his amendment is to guarantee that such Ministers can be summoned before the Welsh Assembly, I have reservations about that and would express them very strongly. However, I do not think that that is his intent.
	It will be perfectly possible for the Assembly to invite any UK Ministers or their civil servants to attend Assembly committee proceedings voluntarily; in fact, it would be the normal expectation that people would voluntarily attend Assembly proceedings and produce information requested by the Assembly. Such requests would undoubtedly be entirely reasonable. It is proper that those in positions of public responsibility respond to reasonable requests, but that would be voluntary; there is no power to summon. The power to summon relates to the Welsh Ministers, the Welsh Executive.
	There is no connection between Clause 37 and Clause 84, to which the amendment refers. Clause 84 does not convert references to Ministers of the Crown elsewhere in the Bill into references to the Welsh Ministers. Clause 84 simply ensures that where functions have been transferred to the Welsh Ministers, references to Ministers of the Crown, such as a Secretary of State, in the relevant legislation or any other documents are read as references to the Welsh Ministers, but only so far as may be necessary for the exercise of those functions by the Welsh Ministers. Clause 84 is equivalent to Section 43 of the Government of Wales Act 1998, which also produced this result.
	All that we are guaranteeing is that where it is relevant, appropriate and accurate that the legislation should refer to Welsh Ministers, the concept of Ministers in the legislation refers to the Welsh Ministers. It does not subject United Kingdom Ministers to the control of the Assembly in the same way that Welsh Ministers clearly are. Welsh Ministers and the Welsh Executive are answerable to the Assembly, but clearly UK Ministers are not directly answerable to it.

Lord Crickhowell: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, will he answer the rather interesting question put by the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, because it is quite clear that Welsh Ministers may have been former Ministers of the Crown and, indeed, have been? How does he get round that little local difficulty?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, their responsibilities are referred to in Clause 37. They are Welsh Ministers and are subject to the requirements and obligations to the Assembly in Clause 37. The fact that historically they served elsewhere would not affect that at all.

Lord Crickhowell: My Lords, Clause 37 was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Livsey. It is very specific. Clause 37(3) states:
	"The Assembly may not impose a requirement under subsection (1) on a person who—
	(a) is or has been a Minister of the Crown".
	Why does that subsection not override the rest of the clause in question?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, we are distinguishing between a Welsh Minister who is responsible to the Executive and Ministers who may have been in a UK Government, whom the Assembly has no right to summon. The Assembly may ask them to attend because it has discovered that they may be able to offer valid evidence, but they cannot be summoned before it; only the Welsh Executive can be summoned. I emphasise what I said in my opening remarks; they cannot be summoned to be questioned about the exercise of their functions outside their Welsh responsibilities because UK Ministers are answerable to the UK Parliament, not to the Welsh Assembly. As I said, I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, through his amendment is trying to bring about a circumstance where UK Ministers would be answerable to the Welsh Assembly. I indicated that if that were what he was about, I would be stout in resisting that notion for all the obvious reasons on the boundaries of devolution. However, I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, presented the argument in those terms and that is why I did not stress it too significantly.

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, there is uncertainty about the matter. I emphasise again that this is a probing amendment; because I was not sure myself what the answer was to the problem that it sought to pose to the Government. However, there has been sufficient uncertainty about the exchanges between the government Benches and the opposition and Liberal Benches for the Government to give an undertaking to go away and reflect on the clarity of what is contained in Clauses 37 and 84 in relation to what the Minister has just contended.
	It seems to me as well that if somebody has been a Minister of the Crown he is not required to meet the obligations under Clause 37(1) in relation to the exercise of any functions of a Minister of the Crown, even though he is no longer a Minister of the Crown. That is another area that needs clarifying. If a Member of the Welsh Assembly has been a Minister of the Crown, what are the implications for his responsibilities and accountability to the Assembly now that he is undertaking that new task? I think that is the way that the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, put it. With great respect to the Minister, I do not think that we have had as full an answer as the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, might have wanted; and certainly not as full an answer as I would want. That point was underlined by my noble friend Lord Crickhowell.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I understand the points that the noble Lord is making. I do not think that it is possible for me to convince him about the issue at this stage, but I shall certainly reflect on the debate and seek to clarify the issue at Third Reading.

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, there is the more general point that arises under Clause 84, to which I referred in my opening remarks. I would be most grateful if the Minister would reflect on this between now and Third Reading. In the mean while, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, I beg to move that further consideration on Report be now adjourned. In moving this Motion, may I suggest that the Report stage begin again not before 8.28 pm?

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

Scotland Act 1998 (River Tweed) Order 2006

Lord Davidson of Glen Clova: rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 25 May be approved [29th Report from the Joint Committee].

Lord Davidson of Glen Clova: My Lords, may I say in my maiden speech, and as I come from the perhaps more adversarial reaches of the Scots Bar, what a pleasure it has been to experience the warmth of the welcome that one receives in this House? I take the opportunity to note the helpfulness and courtesy that I have received from the officials and staff in this House. This has made the translation from the Scottish courts to Advocate-General for Scotland far easier than I had anticipated. In presenting an order that deals with a natural force that flows majestically from Scotland to England, may I say immediately that I intend no metaphor for the office of Advocate-General for Scotland?
	Salmon and freshwater fisheries are an important commercial and recreational asset, and it is important that the legislation dealing with them should be clear and effective. It may be helpful to your Lordships if I briefly set out the background to this order. It is sensible, and has long been the practice, for legislation dealing with salmon and freshwater fishery matters to set up a general framework and to enable discrete provision to be made within that framework for the particular circumstances of particular rivers. A "river" in this context means the entire catchment area of that river and its tributaries.
	Prior to devolution, this caused difficulty only in relation to the border rivers—the Tweed and the Border Esk—which of course run through two different legal jurisdictions. Prior to 1857—just the other day—it was agreed that, although the lower reaches of the Tweed and some of its major tributaries lie in England, Scots law should nonetheless apply in relation to that river. Accordingly, historically, the salmon and freshwater fisheries legislation in force in relation to the Tweed, including those parts which are situated in England, has been Scots law, notably the Tweed Acts of 1857 to 1969. Other Scottish primary legislation relating to salmon and freshwater fishing has also routinely been applied to those parts of the Tweed which lie outside Scotland. Similarly, the River Esk catchment area is governed under English law, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has the responsibility for legislation governing that river.
	With devolution, that convenient arrangement could not continue because, although fishing in rivers is a devolved matter, the Scottish Parliament could not legislate for the parts of the Tweed outside Scotland, and it would be inappropriate for the UK Parliament to legislate, without the approval of the Scottish Parliament, for those parts of the Border Esk outside England. Section 111 of the Scotland Act 1998 provides that Her Majesty may, by Order in Council, make provision for or in connection with the conservation, management and exploitation of salmon, trout, eels and freshwater fish in the border rivers. By virtue of Section 115 and Schedule 7, any such order requires to be approved by both Houses of this Parliament and by the Scottish Parliament.
	While Section 111 would, in theory, permit any regime to be put in place in the border rivers, the Scottish Executive, Defra and those currently charged with the management of fisheries in the River Tweed—the River Tweed Council—are all agreed that the pre-devolution arrangements should be retained and that the legislation in relation to the River Tweed should continue broadly to correspond to the legislation in force in Scotland.
	The objective of this order, therefore, is to provide a clear, up-to-date legal framework for the conservation, management and exploitation of salmon and freshwater fisheries in the River Tweed district. While the general provisions of the order largely reflect the consolidation in 2003 of the general Scottish legislation on salmon and freshwater fisheries, the order is not a consolidation exercise, and the opportunity has been taken to review and modernise those areas where there has always been separate provision for the Tweed. The River Tweed Council has been fully consulted about these proposals and it is content with them.
	I trust it may assist noble Lords if I explain some of the changes and ameliorations. First, the order updates the administration of salmon and freshwater fisheries management in the Tweed, including election and operating rules for the River Tweed Commission. Under previous regimes, every proprietor of a specified salmon fishery in the Tweed was a commissioner and was entitled to vote to elect certain of his fellow commissioners to serve on the River Tweed Council. That seemed unnecessarily complicated. The order therefore removes the River Tweed Council as an entity and replaces it with the River Tweed Commission. Under the order, not every proprietor of a specified fishery will be a commissioner, but he or she will continue to have a vote. Only those elected to represent their fellow proprietors will become commissioners. The definition of "proprietor" is clarified in the order.
	Secondly, the limits of the Tweed district and the estuary have been defined. The geographical extent of what is described in the order as the "Tweed district" has been much amended since the Tweed Fisheries Act 1857. The end result of those amendments is that, for the purposes of the administration of fisheries, "The Tweed" has since 1863 included not only the river of that name but also all the other rivers flowing into the sea between the border between the local authority areas of East Lothian and the Scottish Borders, in the north, and the Holy Island fisheries, in the south. The order defines the district so that it can readily be drawn on a map.
	Thirdly, the definitions of methods of fishing have been brought largely into line with those provided in the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 2003. However, in some cases the opportunity has been taken to go further. For example, the definition of "rod and line" has been amended to prohibit catching fish by foul hooking, and the use of anything other than a landing net as an auxiliary to the taking of fish by angling has been prohibited.
	Fourthly, the modernised provisions in relation to enforcement, which were included in the Scottish consolidation on the recommendation of the Scottish Law Commission, have been incorporated into the order. It has been clarified that, in relation to any offence committed in the Tweed district, bailiffs may cross from the Tweed district into adjoining districts, including Environment Agency areas. Reciprocal arrangements for bailiffs from other salmon fishery districts or from the Environment Agency have also been clarified.
	Finally, power to make subordinate legislation under this order is conferred on the Scottish Ministers. That will enable matters such as annual and weekly close times, provisions as to baits and lures, and any necessary salmon conservation orders, to be dealt with without the requirement for further Orders in Council under the Scotland Act.
	I hope that noble Lords may have found this explanation helpful and a useful addition to the information contained in the order and the supplementary material. If there are further matters on which your Lordships would wish further detail, I will endeavour to deal with those either by oral or written answer. I suggest that the proposals in the order are a sensible and necessary use of Section 111 of the Scotland Act, and I commend them to the House. I beg to move.
	Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 25 May be approved [29th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Davidson of Glen Clova.)

The Duke of Montrose: My Lords, it falls to my lot to congratulate the noble and learned Lord the Advocate General on his maiden speech. We are very glad to have heard from him on these matters. We look forward to seeing him in his place many times in the future. He certainly joins a most distinguished band of Scottish lawyers who have graced the Floor of the House; though at present their numbers are not as plentiful as they once were, so he is all the more welcome. He obviously brings a range of talents to the House, considering that he has degrees in economics, international business and law.
	As he is probably aware, there has been a great affinity between the law in your Lordships' House and sheep. It has been a custom from the reign of Edward III to the present day that the Lord Chancellor should take his seat on the Woolsack filled with the finest wool available, so to my mind it is appropriate that he has chosen as an adjunct to his name in his title the splendid Angus glen of Glen Clova, which is the home of some of the finest wool-producing sheep of the blackface sheep breed, the Perthshire blackface.
	There is also something very appropriate about the fact that he has come to make his maiden speech on the Scotland Act 1998 (River Tweed) Order 2006, because as he is well aware the whole question of rivers and fishing can be one of the most contentious in Scottish law. In fact it is supposed to have been the topic that involved what I am told is the longest case in Scottish legal history—that of Hay v the magistrate of Perth—which was about rights of fishing on the River Tay. If this measure is ever challenged and has to be reconsidered, the noble and learned Lord will be available to keep the House on the right lines when it comes to the matters of fixed engines or fishing by net and coble.
	I gather that the progress of this measure has not been totally straightforward, as the original version was laid before both Houses in December 2004 but had to be immediately withdrawn due to technical errors. The fact that the noble and learned Lord the Advocate-General is the Minister proposing this measure tonight gives us all an added assurance that this time it is all in order.
	The River Tweed is a great asset to both Scotland and England. It is quite something to think that the catchment covers about 1,930 square miles, and the management has been carried out over the years with very much diligence. In 2004, more than 21,600 fish were caught in the Tweed fishery, of which 15,259 were caught by rod and line. When you think of what that means to the tourist industry in those areas, you get some idea of how important it is.
	We thank the noble and learned Lord for explaining the history of the Acts that have been incorporated into this measure, which has obviously had a long and complicated generation. The order is a great opportunity to show the strengths that exist in the union of the various parts of the United Kingdom, though it also must be a matter of pride for the Scots that the main structure of the Bill is the one that has been used by the Scottish Parliament embracing all the other rivers in Scotland; the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 2003. We are very glad to see this measure being brought through at this time.

Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, it gives me enormous pleasure to join the noble Duke in welcoming the noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson of Glen Clova, to his office and especially to this House and to have listened to his interesting exposition of not entirely transparent legislation. He will bring to his task considerable experience of the law and of other matters, which will enable us to enjoy a direct understanding of the complexities which it will be his task to unravel for us. His appearance tonight has commanded great interest, and we welcome him.
	I have a few questions to raise in addition to the remarks of the noble Duke. I confess that I did not find the provided Explanatory Memorandum entirely clear on the extent of the operation of the law. The purpose of the order is clear. It seeks to unify the administration and management of the fisheries. That makes enormous sense. As I understand it, however, the Scotland Act provided for the laying of orders related to the border rivers: the Tweed and the Esk. On the face of it, this goes beyond that. The Tweed district is being provided for, and however sensible that may be in terms of unifying management, we must be satisfied that the legal basis for this is as suggested.
	The Explanatory Memorandum states:
	"This is a definition of an area larger than that of the River Tweed".
	It then states that this was "envisaged by the Scotland Act". I found that a little hard to understand. It did not seem to conform with the plain meaning of the Act, which referred to the border rivers. I have no doubt, however, that that matter can be elucidated further.
	The noble Duke properly referred to the importance of the fisheries to the anglers, visitors and tourists. But there are probably local fisherman used to fishing with methods other than rod and line. There is some provision for that in the use of the net and coble, but I would like to know what consultations took place, and whether the Government were involved in consultation or relied on other bodies to carry out these consultations with other fisheries' interests.
	Article 74 of the order, "Power of Commission to prosecute in England and Wales", applies only to England and Wales. I assume—I hope that I can be reassured on this point—that the case that will be taken by the commission will be subject to the order and that the order amends English law which would otherwise be applicable. There have been, and no doubt still are, substantial differences between Scots and English law on salmon and freshwater fishery matters. I assume that these English differences will not be invoked in the case of actions brought under Part 5 of the order. Otherwise, I welcome the purposes behind the order and hope that it will make easier the task of managing these important fisheries.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, I am particularly glad to welcome the noble and learned Lord to his place and to hear his maiden speech. I live only 15 miles south of the foot of Glen Clova and so he is indeed from time to time a neighbour. It is extremely nice to see him in his place.
	I know that he is an extremely distinguished member of the Scots Bar, and I am sure the House welcomes somebody of his ability in what experience tells me is an important role under the Scotland Act. It is extremely important that United Kingdom legislation which applies to Scotland, or which has impact on Scotland, is well drafted. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord will be in a good position to look at all these Bills before they come to us and ensure that there are no holes which we can spot and draw to the Government's attention.
	I did not think that I had any questions to ask the noble and learned Lord, but there are two and they are probably very simple for him to answer. The first relates to what the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, was saying. How will it be decided whether to prosecute somebody under Scots or English law for a given offence? Is that a matter of the geography of where the offence is committed? Can it be committed in the middle of the Tweed, where it might be difficult to know which side the offence was on? I wondered how that worked. I am sure it has been well thought out, but it would be interesting to know.
	The other question was also perhaps hinted at by the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan. Will you be allowed to guddle a trout; that is, catch it by tickling its tummy? A friend of mine who lives in the Tweed catchment area tells me that the authorities currently pay attention to small trout right at the top of tributaries, miles away from the Tweed. No doubt they will continue to do so under the order. The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, said that there would be local people accustomed to fishing in some small burn which is a tributary to the Tweed.

The Earl of Mar and Kellie: My Lords, I rather think that the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, may be straying out of the legislative area of the Trout (Scotland) Act 1933.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour: No.

The Earl of Mar and Kellie: My Lords, I, too, welcome the noble and learned Lord to this House and to his new position. I welcome him to the Scottish lobby in this House and hope that we will hear more from him in our Scottish discussions.
	Like my noble friend Lord Maclennan, the Explanatory Memorandum gave me the impression that this was just a consolidation measure. But the noble and learned Lord has made certain that we understand that it is not just a consolidation measure, although I am certain that some aspects are consolidatory.
	I declare an interest as a netting rights proprietor on the River Forth in the Clackmannanshire, Falkirk and Stirling district, and I shall come back to an issue on that. First, I note that it will be Scottish Ministers who legislate about the River Tweed, and I am content about that. At a trivial level on the subject of prosecution, I notice that, should an offender be taken to court, if it is in England it will be before a JP but, if it is in Scotland, it will be before the sheriff. I would probably rather appear before a JP because of the weight that the sheriff court carries.
	One point on which I have a question—I appreciate that I did not give notice of this and so I am very happy to have a written answer—is the handing-in of netting rights. It is certainly an issue on the Forth and I guess that that may well be the case on the Tweed. At present, if it comes to it, I want to hand in some of my netting rights, but my salmon fishery board is not certain how to facilitate that. I wonder whether there are any guidelines in the Act or, indeed, whether this issue has been thought about. Clearly, if someone seeks to extinguish netting rights, that will have implications for funding. In the case of the Tweed, it will be the River Tweed Commission. Obviously, if netting rights cease to exist, there will be less assessment and that will affect the financing of the commission. I am perfectly content to hear about that in writing; otherwise, I wish the order well.

Lord Davidson of Glen Clova: My Lords, first, I thank the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, for his very kind words. I am glad to hear that the fame of Glen Clova has spread to this House. Not only do the sheep there have a well known pedigree but there was also the problem of whisky being produced in the 19th century in a way that would not be regarded as entirely lawful today, so Glen Clova has a number of resonances. I should point out that I am associated neither with the sheep nor with the whisky in this regard.
	I thank the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, for his kind words. Perhaps I may come to the points that he raised in a moment. I found it particularly gratifying to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour. I am glad to see that we both share an enthusiasm for Glen Clova—it truly is one of Scotland's loveliest glens. I suppose that this is the wrong place to say that because other people may hear about it as a result and may crowd us out a little. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, for his kind words.
	Perhaps I may deal in order with the issues that have been raised. The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, raised questions arising out of the Explanatory Memorandum and, in particular, the possible extension of the notion of the Tweed River. I understand that the notion of the Tweed River has traditionally been regarded as extending beyond the part of the river that is described on maps as the Tweed. That is a reflection of the earlier legislation and this is certainly a consolidation aspect in that regard.
	I understand that the consultation was widespread, that the Government were involved, and that it went beyond the normal organisations and to angler and proprietor representative organisations.
	As I understand it, Article 74 applies in the English part and is set out in the order in that way. The article simply permits a prosecution by the commissioners. With regard to the point about prosecution raised by both the noble Earl and the noble Baroness, if the offence is committed in Scotland, then the prosecution will take place in Scotland, and vice versa if the offence takes place in England.
	I gather that guddling trout is a vexed issue among the young—certainly in various glens in Scotland. None the less, it is an illegal act and, were people to be caught—I have never participated in such a thing myself—then perhaps sadly for some, prosecution would proceed.
	The question of netting rights raised by the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, is a matter of some complexity. I should be obliged if I might be allowed to produce a written answer to it as soon as possible. If there are no other matters, I commend the order to the House.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure until 8.28 pm.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
	[The Sitting was suspended from 7.56 to 8.28 pm.]

Government of Wales Bill

Consideration of amendments on Report resumed.
	Clause 42 [Defamation]:

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: moved Amendment No. 26:
	Page 27, line 15, at end insert—
	"(1A) The Welsh Ministers may by regulations make provision for and in connection with establishing in any legal proceedings that any statement or publication is absolutely privileged by virtue of subsection (1).
	(1B) No regulations are to be made under subsection (1A) unless a draft of the statutory instrument containing them has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, the Assembly."
	On Question, amendment agreed to.
	Clause 46 [The First Minister]:

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: moved Amendment No. 27:
	Page 28, line 13, after "Her Majesty" insert "from among the members of the Assembly"

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, Amendment No. 27 raises a very interesting anomaly with which we have to contend. The amendment clarifies that the First Minister must be an Assembly Member. It appears that there is a crucial omission in the Bill which means that it is possible for someone who is not an Assembly Member to be selected as First Minister. I cannot imagine that happening; none the less, it is a possibility. As Clauses 46 and 47 stand, it would be possible to nominate someone as First Minister who is not a Member of the Assembly, provided he or she became a Member within 28 days. By contrast, ordinary Ministers must be Assembly Members. That is quite clear. In addition, the parallel provision in the Scotland Act 1998 requires that the First Minister already be a Member of the Scottish Parliament. This amendment ensures that only sitting AMs can become First Minister. Looking at the clause, it is possible to see how that anomaly could come about. We are anxious to know whether the First Minister is to be appointed by Her Majesty after nomination in accordance with Clause 47, as the Bill says in Clause 46 at the moment, or whether it would be very sensible to ensure that he or she is an Assembly Member. I beg to move.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I could not agree more with the noble Lord, Lord Livsey. It is essential that the First Minister should be a Member of the Assembly. But I assure him that the amendment is unnecessary. Clause 46 provides that the First Minister is to be appointed in accordance with Clause 47, which states that the Assembly must,
	"nominate an Assembly Member for appointment".
	Therefore, the condition that the First Minister must be an Assembly Member is already in the Bill.
	Amendment No. 28 would insert a provision that the First Minister must tender his resignation to the Queen if the Assembly passes a vote of no confidence. It is also unnecessary, but this is a very important point, and I am not surprised that the noble Lord wants reassurance on it. Clause 48 provides that the Welsh Ministers must resign if there is a vote of no confidence in them. If that happens, it triggers Clause 47, which requires the Assembly to begin the process of appointing a First Minister if certain events occur. The noble Lord will have noticed that one of those events is,
	"the Assembly resolving that the Welsh Ministers no longer enjoy the confidence of the Assembly".
	That triggers the process.
	During the period between nomination and appointment of a new First Minister, the First Minister will remain in office because there must be someone in Government from whom the civil servants who are the staff of the Welsh Assembly Government can derive their authority to act. However when a different person is appointed as First Minister, the former First Minister ceases to hold office as a result of Clause 46(4). I hope that the noble Lord has received the assurances that he needs to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, I did not refer to Amendment No. 28 in great detail, but the Minister is right to think that this would be a vote of no confidence in the First Minister. I am satisfied with the Minister's response. The point seems to be covered in adjoining clauses. I can see that it is safe to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendment No. 28 not moved.]
	Clause 49 [Counsel General]:
	[Amendment No. 29 not moved.]
	Clause 51 [Limit on number of Ministers]:

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: moved Amendment No. 30:
	Page 30, line 30, leave out "twelve persons" and insert "20 per cent of the Assembly"

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, Amendment No. 30 would ensure that no more than 20 per cent of the Assembly will hold ministerial office. That will allow sufficient Assembly Members to remain to scrutinise the Executive. The issue was debated earlier this evening. Twelve Members out of 60 Members is 20 per cent of the Assembly. We believe it is not desirable that the provision go over that. In a sense, Tomorrow's Wales would have been interested in this particular situation. It anticipates, as it has in other amendments I have put forward this evening, that if the Assembly gets more powers and as a result there are more Members, then, as now, only 20 per cent of the Assembly could hold ministerial office. We believe that this would be a very useful adjunct to the Bill and ensure that the Assembly is not too top heavy from a ministerial point of view. I beg to move.

Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, we discussed something along these lines in Committee. I was one of those who expressed anxiety that too many Assembly Members might be appointed Ministers. I refer to the situation in Scotland where, as I understand it, no limit was placed on the number of Members who could be Ministers. Therefore, there are approximately 22 Ministers in the Scottish Parliament.
	We are glad that in Clause 52 the Government have put a cap on the number of Ministers in the Welsh Assembly Government, and I, for one, hope that the cap remains there.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, the Government share the position adopted by both noble Lords that there should be a cap on the size of the payroll vote in the ministerial team. We think that the Bill already sets a sensible strategy limit. Let me mention that we have a guideline on this. There are a total of 112 Members of Parliament in the ministerial team out of the 659 Members, which is, as those with rapid arithmetical competence would have recognised, 21.7 per cent as regards the Commons. This is 12 out of 60. If at some future stage the arguments of the noble Lords opposite win favour and the Assembly increases in size, certainly with this provision the percentage would obviously decrease. But here it is fixed at 12. It will be recognised that that is a reasonable percentage. I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, I have heard what the Minister had to say. There was a thought in this that there would be a level of consistency for the future. But at this stage I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	Clause 59 [Implementation of Community law]:

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: moved Amendments Nos. 31 to 33:
	Page 34, line 37, leave out "to make regulations"
	Page 34, line 42, leave out "regulations" and insert "provision"
	Page 35, line 3, leave out "regulations" and insert "provision"
	On Question, amendments agreed to.
	Clause 61 [Support of culture etc.]:

Lord Crickhowell: moved Amendment No. 34:
	Page 36, line 6, at beginning insert "Subject to the limitations of section (Reform of Welsh public bodies) and Schedule (Public bodies subject to reform by Assembly),"

Lord Crickhowell: My Lords, on the second day in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Temple-Morris, moved an amendment concerning the future of the Arts Council of Wales and the Assembly's right to give financial support to various bodies under the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Temple-Morris, has explained to me that, because of important prior engagements, he regrettably cannot be here. That is a great pity.
	I want to refer briefly to the long speech that the noble Lord made then, which set out the circumstances in some detail. He spoke of the importance of the arm's-length principle, which has been with us since 1945 and, as he reminded us, was introduced by Jennie Lee. He then drew attention to Section 28 of the Government of Wales Act 1998, which gave the Assembly the power to abolish a range of public bodies or absorb them into the Assembly. He pointed out that the exception provided some protection for a number of public bodies, because it debarred the Assembly from removing any function from organisations unless it was done with the consent of the body concerned.
	He quoted quite extensively from documents issued by the Labour Party before the introduction of the Act and specific undertakings given by Ministers in the other place that royal charter bodies such as the Arts Council of Wales, the Sports Council for Wales, the National Library of Wales, the National Museum of Wales and the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments—bodies created by charter or royal warrant—were all protected in that way. He then described the circumstances that had arisen in the Welsh Assembly where Mr Pugh, the Minister concerned, sought to circumvent the restrictions in Section 28 by using the power to do anything that the Assembly considered appropriate to support a number of organisations, which are now contained in Clause 61. They were then in Section 32 of the 1998 Act.
	During the extensive debate that followed, the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, asked a very shrewd question. He asked what has happened to Section 28 of the 1998 Act. We were then told that it had not been repealed but was still in force.
	That brings me to my various amendments. It is rather unfortunate that the section, and the schedule which accompanies it, have not been repeated in the Bill. The equivalent provisions were placed very close together in the 1998 Act and anyone considering the powers under Section 32 would immediately have recognised that restrictions on those powers were provided by Section 28.
	In the light of what has happened, and the major row that developed in the Welsh Assembly, it is rather important that we do not separate the two provisions completely and tuck away Section 28 and the schedule in another Bill with which people will probably not be so familiar.
	My Amendments Nos. 78 and 80 would simply put Section 28 of the 1998 Act and its schedule back into the Bill. They are altered only by the deletion from Part I of the schedule of bodies that have already been abolished or absorbed. I have checked and got my information from the Welsh Assembly as to what those bodies are. Otherwise, Section 28 and its schedule are put back exactly as they were. Clearly the Government cannot have any objection to the section and the schedule, as they have not been repealed. It is simply a question of whether it is helpful to have their provisions in the Bill so that there is absolute clarity about the position.
	My Amendment No. 34 would do something new. It would make it clear that the power to "do anything" under Clause 61, which I put back into the Bill, cannot be used to overthrow the safeguards of the replaced Section 28. It would simply make it absolutely clear that the power to "do anything" does not override the restrictions in the section and its schedule. Having said that, I have discussed this with Mr Geraint Talfan Davies, the former chairman of the Welsh Arts Council, who I must say was not well treated on that occasion, but we have already covered that ground. He reminded me that it will still be perfectly open to the Assembly to provide grants to arts bodies and other organisations covered by Clause 61 so long as it does not do so on such a scale that it in effect abolishes them or so weakens them that they can no longer function. I am not a lawyer, but I suspect that if it went that far, it might be open to legal challenge as to whether it had gone too far. There is certainly a power, and rightly so, for the Assembly to provide grants on occasion to arts bodies. I did so when I was Secretary of State, as did a number of my successors. I supported the Welsh National Opera and various theatres in Wales when it was important that they should have one-off grants to deal with particular situations. I am not arguing in any way that that power should not be available, but my Amendment No. 35 does require the Assembly to consult the relevant bodies if that power is used. That is important. If you are going to give a grant, you will want to consult the relevant organisations on the effects of doing so. That provides a form of discipline so that the powers are not used unwisely and recklessly. That is the purpose of the first four amendments.
	Prompted by the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, we sought to inquire how much else of the 1998 Act had not been repealed and was still in force. I must say I was pretty startled when I got the schedule from the Minister. It appears that 36 sections of the 1998 Act and some six schedules—I think I have the calculation about right—still exist in whole or in part. Many of them have been amended, and some of them are being amended by the Bill that we are debating now. That will clearly create quite a problem for those who administer the law in any form, both in the Assembly and outside it, because in order to be sure of what the powers of the Assembly and the scope of the activities are, one has not only to refer to the Bill that we are debating today or indeed to the 1998 Act as it was, but to go through the extremely difficult and complex process of discovering how the many sections have been subsequently amended by changes not only by this Bill but by a whole list of Acts that have been passed in the interval. I think that I am right in saying that the Minister referred to just such an amendment to a section or schedule when we debated an amendment moved by my noble friend Lady Noakes.
	My final amendment is simple: within a year the Government should produce a consolidation measure. That would bring together in one Act a clear position on which people can base their judgments. Rather happily, we started the proceedings today with the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor introducing a consolidation measure on other legislation. He pointed out that it is a simple process. It was moved without any dissent in the House and will be looked at by an appropriate committee. Therefore, there cannot be any great obstacle to having these two measures consolidated in this way.
	I have to confess that when I first looked at this Bill, in ignorance I thought that it was in effect a consolidation measure. I thought that it would cover all the matters that concerned the Welsh Assembly, which would be brought together in a different Bill. It was a bit of a revelation to discover how much of the 1998 Act would not be touched and would float around in its previous existence, although in a much more complex form because of the various amendments and repeals of individual sections. That is the basis on which I table my final amendment.
	I believe that the case originally made out by the noble Lord, Lord Temple-Morris, was powerful. There are grounds for concern about these important bodies, which should be provided with appropriate protection. I therefore hope that the House will support that view. I beg to move.

Lord Rowlands: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, for tabling his amendments. In doing so, it allows us to follow up the arguments and discussions that took place following the speech made by my noble friend Lord Temple-Morris. My noble friend has reminded us that his speech raised considerable concerns in many of our minds about what had happened. Initially, when we found out that Section 28 had not been repeated in this Bill, there was perhaps a natural, cynical suspicion that there was something behind this exclusion. However, I then saw the list of other sections that have not been repeated, which the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, mentioned. Therefore, I do not find the absence of Section 28 as sinister as I perhaps initially thought. It is still there; it is in force; and it will apply.
	I am sorry to tell the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, that in doing this service to the House he has made me, and perhaps others, look at the extraordinary Schedule 4 to the 1998 Act. I apologise for my lack of memory or perhaps a lack of research. I cannot recall what I or others said on the schedule when the Bill was going through, but just look at the nature of it. There are an extraordinary four categories of quangos or bodies under the heading, "Bodies which may lose or gain functions", including:
	"An agricultural dwelling-house advisory committee . . . An agricultural wages committee . . . the Welsh Industrial Development Advisory Board . . . The Welsh Language Board".
	I plead ignorance on how originally Ministers explained what those four bodies have in common that led to them being bracketed in this way under this category. They are four extraordinarily different bodies in many respects. If there is a simple explanation, I would be willing to accept it. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, would be happy to give it.

Lord Crickhowell: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord is slightly misled by the fact that I have deleted all the bodies that have been abolished or merged. This was the list of all the quangos that the Welsh Assembly might wish to abolish, and these just happen to be the survivors which for one reason or another it has chosen not to abolish or has not yet got around to doing so. The list was comprehensive; the exceptions are listed elsewhere in the schedule.

Lord Rowlands: My Lords, the noble Lord would have made a good point if there had just been a schedule listing all the bodies, but we have a categorisation here that offers them four different kinds of protection ranging from minimal protection to retrenchment. But what have the first four bodies listed in the present schedule in common that causes them to be bracketed in this particular category?
	For example, let us take Part III, listing the Countryside Council for Wales, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and the Welsh National Board for Nursery, Midwifery and Health Visiting. Again, I should have asked in 1997 and 1998 when we were debating this issue: what do these three bodies have in common that requires them to be bodies which may only gain functions, but in this case not without consent? In Part IV I understand that there is a common denominator for the bodies listed. As the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, explained, in many cases they are chartered bodies or very well established. However, I have a problem with this part. I assume that it seeks to re-entrench these bodies. I have always believed that one of the great portents of devolution was to bring the quangos under control; it was one of the issues that swayed the referendum. People had concluded that quangoland had grown too big.
	While I shall pay tribute to them both in a moment, both the Sports Council and the Arts Council were in the vanguard of Welsh quangoland. Just as the Assembly has now brought into itself ELWa and the WDA, thus creating a better critical mass for policy-making and bringing operational policy together in some of these bodies, I see no reason why, at a date in the not too distant future, sports and arts issues should not also be part of the appropriate department of the Assembly Government—for the same reasons that these other bodies have been brought in already.
	When I served on the Richard commission, one thing that struck me very forcefully when we looked at this area was that there was a growing tension between the quangos and Ministers. While it was never explicit, remit letters from Ministers grew longer and longer as they endeavoured to develop policy for these quango bodies. At the same time, the poor quango bodies had their budgets. While Ministers could tell them to do this, that or the other, they were not responsible for the budgets. That divorce between policy-making, management and operational issues has become increasingly less justifiable and defensible now that we have democratically elected Ministers in an Assembly to whom these bodies can be directly answerable. It is for Ministers to explain their decisions.
	Strangely enough, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, because he has prompted me to review my own thinking and to say that I could not possibly go into a Lobby and support the schedule as it stands. First, I do not understand how the bodies have been categorised and, secondly, I no longer believe in entrenching quangos because reversing that is one of the important processes of devolution.
	However, I support the noble Lord on Amendment No. 35. The Arts Council and the Sports Council have done very good work and I have admired the chairs of those bodies. I have had personal dealings with them and I have found them easy, transparent and helpful in every respect in all my constituency responsibilities in the past. It is no criticism of them but I believe that they should be democratised. However, until that happens, I think the noble Lord's Amendment No. 35 has considerable merit—I hope my noble friend will not slam the door on it—as, indeed, does his reference to consolidation. It may be that now is the time for that.
	What we admired about the drafting of this Bill as opposed to other Bills is that the parliamentary draftsmen did not do what they traditionally would have done: a paste and scissors job on the original 1998 Act. In fact, very unusually, this Bill was rewritten and incorporated all but 25 clauses from the original Bill. It is not as complete as we thought it was because now we know of all the clauses that have been left out. I think the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, has a very good point—at an appropriate moment there should be a consolidation so that we have one and only one Government of Wales Act. But I have to say to the noble Lord that I could not possibly go into the Lobby and support his schedule because the law that has stood since 1998 is, in my opinion, no longer relevant.

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, we have had a very interesting debate, particularly as the previous two speakers were Welsh Office Ministers and speak with much experience of dealing with these bodies. I certainly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, that Amendment No. 35 is worth supporting. In the hiatus that has occurred in recent times, it would have been a vast improvement on what actually happened so far as consultation is concerned.
	I have asked a number of Assembly Members what they think about this amendment and there is a division of opinion among them—particularly in regard to those bodies in Part IV which may only gain functions and only with consent. It is almost as if what we have got here is a bonfire of the quangos and the exclusions are the point at which the matches got wet, or something like that, and did not bring it to a conclusion.
	The worries that people have are that the bodies in Part IV, in particular, are of great value and have status—I refer to the Arts Council, the National Library and the National Museum—and one asks the question whether it is necessary to bring them into the Assembly. I can see all the arguments why they should be—including the good reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, has just given—but the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, has also made a case for them being as they are in the amendment. One of the principles that we have got to address is that the amendment enables participation on a wider scale than would be the case if they were in-house in the Assembly, although of course the democratic aspect of that is extremely important and I do not underestimate it.
	There is also the issue of accountability. I certainly wondered at the time whether if certain bodies which no longer exist as quangos had been made very accountable by, perhaps, having to report on a quarterly basis in front of Ministers and committees of the Assembly and being asked some very awkward questions as to what was happening, that different kind of model might have worked. It certainly might have worked in the case of the Arts Council. When one considers Amendment No. 35, if consultation had occurred perhaps things might have been a lot different.
	I think the noble Lord, Lord Temple-Morris, did us a big service by putting these questions and issues in front of the House. I think that on balance there is a case for retaining some of the remaining quangos—the five in Part IV—but it is extremely important that they are accountable to the Assembly, a democratic body, which can examine exactly what is going on so far as the finances and the running of these bodies is concerned.
	This is a mixed bag of amendments; they have been very helpful in producing the debate, particularly the suggestion in Amendment No. 104 on consolidation. It seems a good idea to consolidate all this so that we know exactly where we are with these bodies.

Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, one of the most revealing debates we had in Committee was that initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Temple-Morris. I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Crickhowell has taken up the key themes. I fully support his amendment.
	The aim is to reinstate the basic protection that characterises chartered bodies such as the Arts Council of Wales. Whatever other views there may be, the status of those bodies, along with the variable status of other non-governmental organisations, was accurately described in Section 28 and the four parts of Schedule 4 to the Government of Wales Act 1998. Those provisions actually describe the statutory status of the various bodies. There is no doubt in my mind that the Assembly Government, in their haste to set alight the much-promised bonfire of the quangos, circumvented Section 28—I use the word used by the noble Lord, Lord Temple-Morris—when they considered the future of the Arts Council. They appear to have resorted to Section 32 for justification. That provision has been amplified and now appears in this Bill as Clause 61, while Section 28 has been left as a remnant in the 1998 Act.
	I hope that the Minister will either confirm or deny that Section 28 is still required to complete the abolition of the Welsh Development Agency, the Wales Tourist Board, the Welsh Language Board, and other easily disposable quangos. It may well be, subject to confirmation, that Section 28 accounts for their preservation.
	I shall not repeat many of the points that have been made, but I want to refer to the bonfire of the quangos—or the reform of Assembly-sponsored public bodies, to use the governmental terminology. Government departments had the benefit of Cabinet Office guidance on non-departmental public bodies. It was issued in September 2004, as far as I can make out, and arose, presumably, because of reviews of public bodies outside Wales at the time.
	The guidance states that a chartered body cannot be dissolved by executive action. It then lays down the line that has, in effect, been taken with the Arts Council of Wales. The guidance goes on to say:
	"If the body concerned receives a grant-in-aid and the Secretary of State is responsible for all the appointments to the Board, then, if the Secretary of State wishes to cease funding that body and terminate the appointments or not renew them, the body would effectively cease to resist. If served with notice of the Secretary of State's intentions, the last act of the body should be to Petition for the surrender of the Charter. Arrangements would then be made for the disposal of any assets and liabilities before the process would be completed".
	That quotation comes from a research paper issued by the National Assembly for Wales.
	As I understand it, the Assembly Government have gone quite far down that road; their progress has been arrested only by the adverse vote in the Assembly in February. They have appointed a committee to look into this matter, and no doubt we will hear the outcome in due course.
	It is important to remember that after the Bill becomes law and Welsh Ministers become Ministers of the Crown under Clause 84 in certain circumstances they could petition the Privy Council to end the chartered body. Again, I would be grateful if the Minister would confirm my understanding of the position.
	I must return to another major point arising from our debate in Committee, when I described the action of the Assembly Government in the arts context as an error of judgment. The noble Lord, Lord Richard, intervened to say that that may or may not be right, but the question is whether this House should prevent the Assembly exercising that judgment. It was and still is a fair point. In a subsequent debate the noble Lord described himself as a genuine devolutionist rather than a restrictionist, and his meaning was perfectly clear.
	My immediate answer was to question whether it was right for this House to aid and abet the Assembly in what it was trying to do with the use of Section 32 of the 1998 Act and Clause 61 of this Bill by appearing to ignore the still-operative Section 28. The noble Lord, Lord Temple-Morris, also argued in his closing speech that, in view of the political and potential legal difficulties in the clash between Sections 28 and 32 of the 1998 Act, we clearly have a supervisory role. He argued very strongly that, in discussing a Bill that provides the mechanisms for further powers to be granted, we must surely be able to discuss the use made of powers already given. The same fundamental issue underlies today's debate. My personal view is that while I am content to allow the free exercise of powers for good or ill, I cannot tolerate or wilfully connive at a manipulation of powers that will undermine a longstanding and generally agreed principle, as the arm's-length principle in arts patronage certainly is. In my view, nothing but harm can come of it.
	With regard to the consolidation point in Amendment No. 104, the Minister was good enough to send me clarification about which parts of the 1998 Act were likely to survive this Bill. Clarification took the form of an annex listing sections and schedules the Government did not intend to repeal and which would therefore remain in effect. It is a very mixed bag. After the swathe of repeals has been cut, some 12 sections and one schedule of that Act are subject to amendment by Schedule 10 to this Bill alone. Other sections and schedules are subject to change under this Bill, as is other legislation such as the Public Audit (Wales) Act and the Public Services Ombudsman (Wales) Act. The net result is that it is indeed difficult to find out precisely what the law is in certain areas, as my noble friend Lord Crickhowell pointed out. I therefore endorse my noble friend's call for some consolidation of existing legislation.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, this has been an interesting short debate. I am interested in the fact that a lot of the discussion centred on the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Temple-Morris in Committee. As was acknowledged at the time, he was having an interesting discussion about the nature of our arts funding and the relationship between the Arts Council of Wales and the Welsh Assembly. He made some interesting and valuable points, as I said at the time. As someone who has lived in the interface between Government and the arts practically all my life, I recognised so many of the arguments. During our second day in Committee I explained and clarified in my letter, which is available in the Library, the status of Section 28 and Schedule 4 to the Government of Wales Act 1998. However, I will try to give further clarification.
	Amendments Nos. 34, 35 and 78 would introduce Section 28 and Schedule 4 to the Government of Wales Act 1998 into the Bill. These provisions relate more to the law applying to Welsh public bodies than to the rest of the subject matter of the Bill. The Bill is focused clearly on setting out a new constitutional framework. I reiterate that these provisions will not be repealed or re-enacted in the Bill. The amendments are therefore unnecessary.
	A lot of discussion centred on Amendment No. 35, which introduces Section 28 of the Government of Wales 1998 into the Bill. The effect of the amendment would be negligible because Section 28 has not been repealed and still stands on the statute book. The amendment also fails to take into account that the functions currently belonging to the Assembly will, with the enactment of this Bill, pass to Welsh Ministers as a result of separation.
	Section 28 of the Government of Wales Act is just one of the numerous provisions on the statute book which confer functions on the Welsh Assembly. Like other functions conferred on the Assembly, they will, with the enactment of the Bill, pass to Welsh Ministers. That is provided for in Schedule 10 to the Bill.
	The Bill is designed to reflect the current devolution settlement, not that of eight years ago, when the Government of Wales Act 1998 was passed. As a result, it does not include provisions which do not need to be re-enacted. This has kept it from being an unnecessarily complex piece of legislation.
	Amendment No. 80 would make Welsh Ministers consult the charter bodies before being able to fund other bodies in the support of culture. The amendment would put an unnecessary constraint and burden on Welsh Ministers. From the point of view of bodies seeking funding, it would add another layer of bureaucracy.
	Although there was an interesting discussion about Amendment No. 104, we believe that it is unnecessary. There is no need for the Secretary of State to take up Parliament's valuable time in "consolidating" the Bill with the Government of Wales Act 1998. Schedules 10 and 12 to the Bill set out clearly which provisions of that Act are to be amended and which are to be repealed as a consequence of the Bill. I hope that noble Lords will agree that the amendments are unnecessary and, furthermore, are unsuitable, as they do not take account of separation.
	In summary, the Government of Wales Bill does not materially alter the position with regard to the power to support culture or the powers to reform public bodies in Wales, beyond placing them, as executive functions, with Welsh Ministers. As I have said a couple of times, that is a natural consequence of the separation of the Welsh Assembly Government from the Assembly, which has all-party support.
	The noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Conwy, asked about the abolition of these bodies. Welsh Ministers could not petition the Privy Council for abolition of a charter body because they are not Ministers of the Crown. On the positive side—the noble Lord touched on this—the Welsh Assembly Government are in the process of working up a new culture strategy which will look at new policy on areas such as the theatre in Wales. It has also set up the Stephens review to look at the role of the Arts Council in Wales and funding for the arts, again, addressing points raised in Committee. The Welsh Assembly Government recognise the importance of the arts and enabling people to take part in a diverse range of arts activities, but matters relating to those and how they are achieved are very properly for the Assembly.

Lord Crickhowell: My Lords, I listened with interest to what the Minister said. I understand entirely that putting the section and schedule back into the Bill is not strictly necessary because the Act has not been repealed, but I advance the argument that it was important to have the two provisions standing together.
	Unless I am looking at a totally different Marshalled List from everybody else, there is some confusion. It was not Amendment No. 45 that roped back in the sections of the 1998 Act, but the later amendments. The key amendment for me is Amendment No. 34, which provides the power to do anything, subject to the limitations of the section that is going back in and its schedule.
	I got a good deal of support around the House for my Amendment No. 35, which deals with consultation. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, for his observations. Like him, I entirely agree that there was nothing sinister in omitting the section and the schedule from the Bill. I also welcomed his support for Amendment No. 35. He made a powerful speech suggesting that the powers of Section 28 and its schedule were not necessary, or should not be there, or should be altered or amended. But that is not what we are about here. That is not up for debate. If he had wanted to do that, he should have tabled appropriate amendments. The Government are not altering or repealing or changing Section 28 now, and probably for the reason that my noble friend Lord Roberts of Conwy declared—that it is still absolutely necessary if the so-called bonfire of the quangos is to go on. Without it, the whole process would be halted.
	We are not really debating whether these provisions should have been put into the original legislation, or whether particular organisations should have been given protection. They are listed as they are because they are charter bodies. There are appropriate ways of getting rid of charter bodies which are not covered by this Bill, or the 1998 legislation, and which need to be dealt with appropriately. There was a suggestion that these bodies should be subject to democratic supervision. I can only say that, in my time as Secretary of State, the National Museum of Wales, for example, as well as the National Library of Wales and the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments, found their expenditure of moneys and so on under pretty close supervision at times by the Welsh Office. I am sure the Assembly has all those powers today. When I took the decision that we should fund the new galleries of the National Museum of Wales, my successor, the noble Lord, Lord Walker, intervened very tightly on how that project was run. So those powers are all there.
	We had a brief reference to the arm's-length principle. I happen to be one of those who believe it has stood the test of time. I think that to have an Assembly dealing with detailed day-to-day decisions on a whole range of arts bodies around the country would be a profound mistake. I follow the affairs of the Arts Council of Wales pretty closely. My wife was a member of it for seven, eight or nine years—I forget—and I attended a great many of the functions that it supported and have done so ever since. I am afraid I think that we need to ensure that the safeguards are retained, that people take notice of them, and that the arm's-length principle is upheld. Therefore, I intend to test the opinion of the House.

On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 34) shall be agreed to?
	Their Lordships divided: Contents, 41; Not-Contents, 55.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
	[Amendment No. 35 not moved.]

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: moved Amendment No. 36:
	After Clause 77, insert the following new clause—
	"THE WELSH LANGUAGE
	(1) The Welsh Ministers must adopt a strategy ("the Welsh language strategy") setting out how they propose to promote and facilitate the use of the Welsh language.
	(2) The Welsh Ministers must adopt a scheme ("the Welsh language scheme") specifying measures which they propose to take, for the purpose mentioned in subsection (3), as to the use of the Welsh language in connection with the provision of services to the public in Wales by them, or by others who—
	(a) are acting as servants or agents of the Crown, or
	(b) are public bodies (within the meaning of Part 2 of the Welsh Language Act 1993 (c. 38)).
	(3) The purpose referred to in subsection (2) is that of giving effect, so far as is both appropriate in the circumstances and reasonably practicable, to the principle that in the conduct of public business in Wales the English and Welsh languages should be treated on a basis of equality.
	(4) The Welsh Ministers—
	(a) must keep under review both the Welsh language strategy and the Welsh language scheme, and
	(b) may from time to time adopt a new strategy or scheme or revise them.
	(5) Before adopting or revising a strategy or scheme, the Welsh Ministers must consult such persons as they consider appropriate.
	(6) The Welsh Ministers must publish the Welsh language strategy and the Welsh language scheme when they first adopt it and—
	(a) if they adopt a new strategy or scheme they must publish it, and
	(b) if they revise the Welsh language strategy or the Welsh language scheme (rather than adopting a new strategy or scheme) they must publish either the revisions or the strategy or scheme as revised (as they consider appropriate).
	(7) If the Welsh Ministers publish a strategy or scheme, or revisions, under subsection (6) they must lay a copy of the strategy or scheme, or revisions, before the Assembly.
	(8) After each financial year the Welsh Ministers must publish a report of—
	(a) how the proposals set out in the Welsh language strategy were implemented in that financial year and how effective their implementation has been in promoting and facilitating the use of the Welsh language, and
	(b) how the proposals set out in the Welsh language scheme were implemented in that financial year,
	and must lay a copy of the report before the Assembly."

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 36, I shall speak to Amendment No. 116. During our debates on this Bill, we have heard many cogent and persuasive arguments from all sides of the House about the rare opportunity that this Bill presents with regard to the Welsh language. Those arguments have been powerfully and passionately expressed, and the Government have listened carefully to the points that noble Lords have made. Having reflected carefully on those arguments, I am very pleased to be able to bring forward Amendments Nos. 36 and 116, which show that the Government are listening to reasonable concerns expressed during debate in the House.
	The concern expressed, in particular by my noble friend Lord Prys-Davies, was that the current good practice of the Welsh Assembly Government in respect of the Welsh language would not be safeguarded in the future. The Government therefore propose to put the current good practice on a statutory footing. The requirement to adopt a strategy setting out how the Welsh Ministers propose to promote and facilitate the use of the Welsh language corresponds to Iaith Pawb, the national action plan for a bilingual Wales.
	The requirement will adopt a strategy to complement, as my noble friend Lord Prys-Davies himself argued in Committee, the function of promoting and facilitating the use of the Welsh language. This will continue to be a requirement of Welsh Ministers, whether they acquire statutory function of the Welsh Language Board or not, as a result of the WLB merger. The requirement to adopt a Welsh language scheme is explicitly linked to the principle of equality between English and Welsh. This mirrors the Welsh Assembly Government's current practice.
	The transitional provisions in Amendment No. 96 will mean that the Welsh Ministers will inherit Iaith Pawb and the Welsh Assembly Government Welsh language scheme as they exist before the separation, so there will be continuity. I commend these amendments to the House. I beg to move.

Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, we welcome the Government's new clause, which fills a considerable gap that became glaringly obvious in Committee, when the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, introduced his new clause upon which the Government have closely modelled their own. The noble Lord is to be warmly congratulated.
	The new clause compensates for the inexplicable loss of Section 47 of the 1998 Act from this Bill, and the deplorable inadequacy of Clause 35 which replaced it. If the Bill, prior to the introduction of the new clause, provides an indication of the way the Assembly Government were going to treat the Welsh language after the emasculation of the Welsh Language Board and its merger with the Government, then all those protesters who have feared the worst were right to do so. The Government may have seen the light in the nick of time because the protests were mounting, and involving not just Cymdeithas yr Iaith—the Welsh Language Society—but the normally peaceful body Merched y Wawr, the Welsh women's movement. All are deeply suspicious of the Government's intentions.
	The new clause seeks to remedy the twin omissions noted by the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, in Committee, when he said:
	"They are, first, the omission from the Bill of a duty by Welsh Ministers to treat the Welsh language on a basis of equality with the English language, and secondly, the equally significant omission of a duty on Ministers to promote and facilitate the use of the Welsh language in the good governance of Wales".—[Official Report, 19/4/06; col. 1147.]
	Both requirements were enshrined in our Conservative Welsh Language Act 1993, which has served successive Governments, and the country, well over the years.
	As far as I can see, the only significant part of the clause of the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, that the Government have not incorporated into theirs is his requirement that there should be an annual assessment of the effectiveness of the Government's measures. I understand the Government's view that the annual report should provide an adequate indication of progress, or lack of it. Lack of progress would require an in-depth assessment of the measures taken.
	My personal concern about the new clause centres on subsection (5) and Welsh Ministers consulting,
	"such persons as they consider appropriate",
	before adopting or revising a strategy or scheme as described in the clause. I would like them to have to consult a statutory body of advisers with some expertise and experience in language matters.
	The only reason that I have not tabled an amendment to this effect is that I am told that the future of the Welsh Language Board is shrouded in a mist of uncertainty. Or is it?
	"On 30th November 2004 the First Minister announced that the Welsh Language Board would be merged into the Welsh Assembly Government"—
	so reads the opening sentence of the culture and language Minister's foreword to his consultative document of March this year on the future of the board and other related matters. He goes on to say:
	"The merger programme is already well on track and the merger of the Welsh Language Board will contribute to the creation of a core of the Welsh public service".
	It is difficult to see the Assembly Government resiling from that position—it is possible but unlikely. In its response to the consultative document in May, the Welsh Language Board seems to have given up the ghost, although I may be unfair to it in saying so.
	As I understand the consultative document, entitled Making the Connections, it is intended to retain the residual body that remains after the dissolution of the board in an advisory role under the chairmanship of the Minister until an independent regulator or judge adjudicator, sometimes referred to as "Y Dyfarnydd" is appointed in due course. It is not a very satisfactory proposition.
	Bearing in mind the short shrift given to the board and the totally unsatisfactory provision for the Welsh language in the Bill before the inclusion of the new clause, it is vital that we have a firm commitment from the Government to the substance of the new clause and the policy foundation that underlies it. That means that there should be statutory independent advisers to ensure it. The Assembly Government's own consultative document makes frequent reference to the need for "expert external advice" on Welsh language issues. This is their opportunity to show that they mean it.

Lord Prys-Davies: My Lords, for my part, I am deeply grateful to my noble friend Lord Evans and to the Government for tabling this amendment. I am very happy to accept the amendment and the Welsh Language Board is also satisfied. I believe that it satisfies all the objectives of the amendment which I have been pursuing with the Government for some weeks. In particular, in view of the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Conwy, I point out that in subsection (8)(a) there is a provision for Welsh Ministers to publish an annual report on the effectiveness of their implementation of a strategy to promote and facilitate the use of the Welsh language. The Welsh language is in a vulnerable state and there is no doubt at all in my mind that this is an important amendment.
	It is a late hour and I do not want to delay the House, but I thank everyone who supported the original amendment in Grand Committee. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Conwy, for his generous words. There has been wholehearted support for the amendment from the Welsh Language Board, from the Gorsedd and from many individuals throughout Wales who care deeply for the language and who have written to Ministers in support. I also place on record my appreciation of the interest and vital support of the First Minister of the National Assembly, Mr Rhodri Morgan. I look forward to this amendment being part of the law of the land.

Lord Elystan-Morgan: My Lords, briefly but very sincerely, I also tender my congratulations to the Minister, to the Government and to the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, on what I believe is a very significant step forward. I do not think that it was entirely worthy of the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Conwy, to suggest that there was bad faith on the part of Her Majesty's Government, least of all any suggestion of sinister motives. However, it would have been easy for Her Majesty's Government to have said, "Well, by and large, this is what we have been doing for many years, this is the policy set out in publications such as Iaith Pawb"—that is the language of everyone. I believe that giving statutory sinew to the policies and practices of the Assembly is extremely significant. On the future of the Welsh language, the psychology is all important. The noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, says that its position is fragile. I am sorry to say that I completely agree with him. This House will have heard on many occasions the famous words of Edmund Burke:
	"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing".
	For the Welsh language to remain in jeopardy, it is only necessary for those who wish it well to be utterly passive about its future.
	I am very glad to see the word "must" included. It occurs in Clauses 72 to 78 inclusive. Normally the mandatory provision in a statute is brought about by the use of the word "shall", but "must" makes it more mandatory still.
	I am very proud indeed to be in the House tonight to see a measure that I am convinced is of considerable significance as regards the future of the ancient language of Wales. Diolch yn fawr.

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, briefly but sincerely I express the thanks of those on these Benches for the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies. Sometimes we say, "Cymal Gwilym Prys-Davies". We shall possibly look at today and say "The Prys-Davies clause that led to so many other things". It opens doors and opportunities in the Assembly. There is now virtually a blank cheque for the Assembly to support the Welsh language, even as the Cymdeithas yr Iaith—the Welsh Language Society—requests the appointment of a language commissioner. They must discuss this and make the most of the opportunity that is presented to them today.
	There is a continuing move forward for the language. We thank the Government for accepting this amendment and, of course, as I have said already, we thank the noble Lord who originated it. Diolch yn fawr—that means "Thank you very much".

Lord Crickhowell: My Lords, I cannot let this pass without saying a few words. First, I thank the Minister for his involvement in the amendment and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, for his role. He has had considerable success. My noble friend Lord Roberts of Conwy and I have battled together for more than 30 years on behalf of the Welsh language and have introduced a number of important measures in its support. Over the years, no one has deserved more credit for the support of the Welsh language than my noble friend. For the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, to accuse him of sinister motives seems to me to be a great pity. I shall not give way at this moment.

Lord Elystan-Morgan: My Lords—

Lord Crickhowell: My Lords, the noble Lord said it was unworthy of my noble friend to suggest that there were sinister motives. As the noble Lord spent most of the last speech he made in Committee accusing me of sinister motives, I am not going to take lectures on the subject from him. My noble friend raised some important issues about the role of the Welsh Language Board. In view of the serious doubts raised by the chairman of the board in the last publication that I read, I hope that my noble friend's remarks will be taken very seriously.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, I am delighted that all noble Lords welcomed this amendment. I thank my noble friend Lord Prys-Davies for pressing this important point so effectively, with the result that we have today.
	Two questions were asked by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Conwy. I think the first has been answered by my noble friend Lord Prys-Davies. Subsection (8) of the new clause requires the assessment of effectiveness. The noble Lord mentioned consulting at least twice. This is a standard provision; there are similar provisions for the voluntary sector and business schemes. The Welsh Ministers should have some discretion. The Welsh Assembly Government have already established a practice of consulting widely on all such schemes and strategies, and that is what they will do with that.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, this is a constructive note on which to end today's proceedings. I beg to move that consideration on Report be now adjourned.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
	House adjourned at eight minutes before ten o'clock.